Excerpt from Beside Lake Beautiful Summers, and if I set a - talking and grow garrulous, set it down not to age, but to love; for love and age are alike garrulous. Good things bear talk ing of, and that right often. Did not Leonardo so frequently paint a smile upon the lips of those he loved to celebrate, as that this shadow of laughter has passed into the sayings of the world as the smile of Leonardo? Life's mercies will bear frequent celebration. There Should be celebrated natal days for the Visions and loveliness and beav emly Visitations of our hearts. Pack the 11calendar full of birthdays of holy things, and so make, by and by, each day an anniversary. I remember, with laughter, the rainy night on which, long ago, I began to read The Pairie Queene, and a windy day when, blown by the untir ing wind, I found upon the prairies Corn well's poem, The Whippoorwill; and the afternoon when for the first time I lifted mine eyes unto the hills and saw the mountains build battlements of snow toward the sun; and the bewildering day when I first saw the pine trees in the Sierras and heard their haunting psalm Ody. Why, certes, these are birthdays to me, and shall be evermore; and if I were to take a calendar (as would be wiser than most I do) and inscribe thereon some glad event of soul, some revela tional mood, some sacrament in religion or love or service or discovery of book or herohood Where least I thought to find one, or poem that tuned the heart to new, sad music, or landscape beautiful with light or dusk or moonlight or caress of water and the vista Of backward mov 12ing seas - if I were to write over against each date some gladness it had brought into my life, each day in the year long reckoning would be starred with some radiant memory. Such calendar is well worth anybody's making, inasmuch as it would give new data for thankfulness. How ever, let this pass. I speak now Of the lake With tilt of wave and music of it, of shore and dune and pine and mysti fying lights upon the sunset waters and the windings Of the river to meet the waiting am plitude of horizonless waves. God's perpetuated mercy is that beauty is customary; but in some places beauties do as stars do in certain spaces of the Skies - they cluster. Be side Lake Beautiful is such a spot. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.