MIST- I don’t believe the sleepers in the house know where they are.
SMOKE- They’ve been here long enough to push the woods back from around the house and part them in the middle with a path.
MIST- And still I doubt if they know where they are. And I begin to fear they never will. All they maintain the path for is the comfort of visiting with the equally bewildered. Nearer in plight their neighbors are than distance.
SMOKE- I am the guardian wraith of starlit smoke that leans out this and that way from their chimney. I will not have their happiness despaired of.
MIST- No one – not I would give them up for lost simply because they don’t know where they are. I am the damper counterpart of smoke that gives off from a garden ground at night. But lifts no higher than a garden grows. I cotton to their landscape. That’s who I am. I am no further from their fate than you are
SMOKE- They must by now have learned the native tongue. Why don’t they ask the red man where they are?
MIST – They often do, and none the wiser for it. So do they also ask philosophers who come to look in on them from the pulpit. They will ask anyone there is to ask – In the fond faith accumulated fact – will of itself take fire
and light the world up. Learning has been a part of their
religion.
SMOKE – If the day ever comes when they know who they are, they may know better where they are. But who they are is too much to believe – either for them or the onlooking world. They are too sudden to be credible.
MIST – Listen, they murmur talking in the dark on what
should be their daylong theme continued. Putting the lamp out has not put their thought out. Let us pretend the dewdrops from the leaves are you, and I evesdropping on their unrest – a mist and smoke evesdropping on a haze – And see if we can tell the bass from the soprano.
THAN SMOKE AND MIST WHO BETTER COULD APPRAISE – THE KINDERED SPIRIT OF AN INNER HAZE!
SMOKE – If the day ever comes