Vain hope! I was not to be an ursicide. I begin to fear that I shall
slay no other than my proper personal bearishness. I did my duty for
another result at Ripogenus. I bolted audaciously into every barn. I
made incursions into the woods around. I found the mark of the beast,
not the beast. He had not long ago decamped, and was now, perhaps,
sucking the meditative paw hard-by in an arbor of his bear-garden.
After a vain hunt, I gave up Beast and turned to Beauty. I looked about
me, seeing much.
Foremost I saw a fellow-man, my comrade, fondled by breeze and
brightness, and whispered to by all sweet sounds. I saw Iglesias below
me, on the slope, sketching. He was preserving the scene at its _bel
momento_. I repented more bitterly of my momentary falseness to Beauty
while I saw him so constant.
Furthermore, I saw a landscape of vigorous simplicity, easy to
comprehend. By mellow sunset the grass slope of the old farm seemed no
longer tanned and rusty, but ripened. The oval lake was blue and calm,
and that is already much to say; shadows of the western hills were
growing over it, but flight after flight of illumined cloud soared
above, to console the sky and the water for the coming of night.
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