For the rest the vision of that night was prophetic, and the feet
of my friend are now set on that way which was the innermost impulse
of his soul.

--May 15, 1893





The Priestess of the Woods





Here is a legend whispered to me, the land or time I cannot tell,
it may have been in the old Atlantean days. There were vast woods
and a young priestess ruled them; she presided at the festivals
and sacrificed at the altar for the people, interceding with the
spirits of fire, water air and earth, that the harvest might not
be burned up, nor drenched with the floods, nor town by storms and
that the blight might not fall upon it, which things the elemental
spirits sometimes brought about. This woodland sovereignty was
her heritage from her father who was a mighty magician before her.
Around her young days floated the faery presences; she knew them
as other children know the flowers having neither fear nor wonder
for them. She saw deeper things also; as a little child, wrapped
up in her bearskin, she watched with awe her father engaged in mystic