The labour of the year is at hand and on its threshold I take this holiday.

To-day I give you a glimpse of paradise; a garden in which all manner of loveliness blooms simply from the overflow of life, without thought, or care, or toil.

This was my life before men came with their cries of hunger and nakedness; this shall be my life again when they have passed beyond.

This which lies before you like a dream is a glimpse of life as it is in me, and shall be in you; immortal, inexhaustible fulness of power and beauty, overflowing in frolic loveliness.

This shall be to you a day out of eternity, a moment out of the immortal youth to which all true life comes at last, and in which it abides." I cannot say that I heard these words, and yet they were as real to me as if they had been audible; in all fellowship with Nature silence is deeper and more real than speech.