Читать книгу Adventures in Silence онлайн

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Let’s not hurry. Let our journey be like one of those happy family wanderings in the old farm days, long before the age of gasoline. On a Sunday afternoon we would all start walking, on past the back of the farm. Father, mother and the baby, all would go. We could stop to drink from the spring, to rest under the pines, to stand on the hill looking off over the valleys. The beauty of the walk was that time was no object; our destination was nowhere in particular, and we always reached it. No one hears of those family trips in these days. We “go” now. The family, smaller than of old, will crowd into a car and go rushing about the country in an effort to cover as many miles as possible, and to do as little sight-seeing as may be during the rush. Now, we shall not hurry, and there will be no great objection to our leaving the road now and then to gather flowers or bright stones, or to watch a bird or a squirrel. We shall need all the pleasant memories we can think of when we arrive.

Very likely you have before now entered into a “solitude where none intrude,” and have thought yourself entirely alone in the silence. But you had not reached the real end of the road. You missed some of the familiar sounds of your everyday life, but there were substitutes. There was always the low growl of the ocean, the murmur of the wind among the trees, the cheerful ripple of the brook, the song of the birds, or some of the many sweet sounds of nature. It was not the silence which we know, nor were the voices which came to you harsh or distorted. They were clear and true, even though they were strange to you.