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The polished slabs were laid before him on the table in rows, as he had arranged them to show to a customer: wine-coloured mahogany, and golden satinwood; ebony black as jet; tulip-wood mottled like fine tortoiseshell; coromandel wood, striped black and white like the coat of a civet cat; ghostly basswood, shining white on dead white; woods of clouded grain, and woods of shining grain, grain that showed like the slanting, splintered lines of hewn stone, like moss, like the veins of flowers, the fringes of birds' feathers, the striping and dappling of beasts; woods of exquisite grain where the life of the tree drew its own image in its own heart; woods whose surface was tender to the touch like a fine tissue; and sweet-smelling sandalwood and camphor-wood and cedar.
Before what? But here he fell asleep, and almost instantly slipped from this veranda in the Sierras, six thousand miles away, to an ancient terrace, overgrown with moss and tradition, that overlooked the sedate glory of an English park.
The wily chief used all of his old skill; he walked backward over moss and sand where his footprints showed plainly; he leaped wide fissures in stony ravines, and then jumped back again; he let himself down over ledges by branches; he crossed creeks and gorges by swinging himself into trees and climbing from one to another; he waded brooks where he found hard bottom, and avoided swampy, soft ground.
Saturday morning, August fifth, broke with a radiance and a glory seldom equaled even in that land of glorious sunrises and sunsets. A flame of red and orange in the east ushered in the rising sun, not a cloud marred the azure of the heavens, the moss was white with frost, and the crisp, clear atmosphere sweet with the scent of the new day.
Unmarked, the day faded, a new light was spread over the waters, the mist was spangled with silver points, the Spanish moss took on the whiteness of lace against the black forest swamp, and on the yellow face of the moon the star-shaped leaves of a gum were printed. At length I paused. She neither spoke, nor moved save for the rising and falling of her shoulders.
For miles into the woods will the Indian women hike to pick the soft moss which is only to be met with in certain localities. They will hang it out on bush and shrub to dry for weeks before it is wanted, and then trudge back again to bring it home, in cloths or blankets swung on their often already-burdened shoulders.
Fifteen minutes later I am picking my way through this "cultivated field," which, upon closer acquaintance, proves to be a smooth lava-bed, and the "cabbages" are nothing more or less than boulders of singular uniformity; and what is equally curious, they are all covered with a growth of moss, while the volcanic bed they repose on is perfectly naked.
Hal assisted the young lady to mount, and they set off along the track of the moss, driving the cows, sheep, and goats before them not a very considerable number till they came to another hut, much smaller and more rude than that where they had left Mother Doll.
They descended the dry bed of a stream, and suddenly Balthasar's foot slipped on the moss and they fell together locked in each other's embrace. They seemed to sink forever into a delicious void, and the world of the living ceased to exist for them.
'Ah! said the old thatch, 'rather let them say, 'How beautiful is the loving moss!" So it is with the religion of Christ, it adorns and beautifies the life who really wears it; so that the plainness of that life is covered, its ruggedness softened, and its "pain transformed into profit and its loss into gain."
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