Midnight on the Desert

Midnight on the Desert BY J. E. HICKMAN, A. M. Tis mid-night's restful hour. The Desert's withering breath is cooled and softened into a gentle evening zephyr. It comes like a benediction to the Desert's children and the passing stranger. There is no whir of myriad insect life, no call from the night-bird, no baying of the distant watch-dog; for the children of the Desert are few, and they are resting from the day's sweltering heat. The night is as silent as a tomb. The only sound comes from the munching of my tired, horses. Night's blue curtain is drawn snugly down over the western horizon. The plain is lurid in the moonless air. The mountains are too far away to •be beetling in their heights, yet near enough that their dark silhouettes jut out like sentinels into the blue canopy. From without the darkness, away on the mountainside, comes the lonesome, yet startling cry of a wolf, — the Arab of the desert, It was a tenor solo. Then from the hundred voices, coming from every direction, rang out a coyote chorus. Some voices were filled with sadness, long drawn out and wailing ; others with tones short and tremolo ; still others were sharp and breaking, with a complaining element running through every cry. It was their mid-night hymn of praise to the Spirit of the Desert. This lasted for only a few minutes, and closed as suddenly as it began. Again solitude reigned. Never before had the lonesome howl of a roving wolf filled me with such grandeur. My soul was lifted into the realm of the sublime, for I had heard primitive nature, in the language of creation's mourn, uttering her wild emotions. Lifting my eyes, and sweeping the heavens with my vision, I beheld the stellar universes of God. Some of the stars shone with splendid brilliancy, while others just trembled into sight, like some faint wave struggling to reach a far off land, and dying as it touches the shore. Still beyond lay the Milky Way whose dust-like path is made of myriads of glowing suns. I longed to read the book of night and interpret its hidden mysteries, thought of that celestial world, enthroned somewhere away off in the galaxies of stars, which holds in rhythmic harmony the unnumbered worlds. I could conceive of the yibrant force of Elohim's will, being sent throughout the etherial deeps, carrying his message to beings whose souls were attuned with his eternal fiat. Feeling all this, and more, I cried, "O God, put me in harmony with the Infinite."