I fear Mrs. Cathcart and some others whom I
could name, mean by _Nature_ something very bad indeed, which yet an
artist is bound to be loyal to. The colonel however seemed to be of a
different opinion.
"If there never was such a man as Uncle Peter," said he, "there ought to
have been; and it is all the more reason for putting him into a story that
he is not to be found in the world."
"Bravo!" cried I. "You have answered a great question in a few words."
"I don't know," rejoined our host. "Have I? It seems to me as plain as the
catechism."
I thought he might have found a more apt simile, but I held my peace.
Next morning, I walked out in the snow. Since the storm of that terrible
night, it had fallen again quietly and plentifully; and now in the
sunlight, the world--houses and trees, ponds and rivers--was like a
creation, more than blocked out, but far from finished--in marble.
"And this," I said to myself, as I regarded the wondrous loveliness with
which the snow had at once clothed and disfigured the bare branches of the
trees, "this is what has come of the chaos of falling flakes! To this
repose of beauty has that storm settled and sunk! Will it not be so with
our mental storms as well?"
But here the figure displeased me; for those were not the true right
shapes of the things; and the truth does not stick to things, but shows
itself out of them.
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