Dear Friends: If, perchance, sorrow has come to dwell within the hearts of any of you, you will need—as I have had great need—of a truly “quiet hour.” One in which your very spirit can relax and grow calm and wait for comfort.
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It happens that we live in what may well be termed a wooded country. There is much timber on our farm and for my quiet hour I have long held sacred a beautiful nook in a small wooded ravine. It is really a small creek bed and across it lies a fallen tree. This I climb upon and oftentimes lean against the sloping side. Sometimes I take a rug (blanket) with me; sometimes my Bible but more often I go with nothing, save my sorrowing, harassed spirit seeking comfort. Perhaps you may not know, but there are some sorrows which nothing earthly can soothe. It requires the divine hand. And I think nowhere can one lose care and worry and sorrow so well as in a quiet, woodsy spot, with grass under one's feet and the blue sky overhead, and calm, silent trees all around. From my nook I look up to the blue through a circle of green. Sometimes I look with blurred eyes. But whatever trouble I carried there, it was poured out through that circle and a sense of comfort and peace came.
Sometimes I have entered it with an important problem to decide upon, and left with a clearer sense of what was right and best. I go, too, when I am very happy to pour out my thanksgiving.
So my nook with its quiet hour has grown to be a very necessary part of my life. I do not go every day, often not every week, but whenever I feel the great need of it. Of course, I arrange the domestic regime so that I shall not be needed or missed for a time. I do not say that I am going to my nook. I just quietly see that some one else is at hand to watch over everything and I slip away.
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