The Shadow of the Past by Ethel Mills

There are a thousand beauties of the night, as there are varied shades in the qualities of light and colour, many of them so subtly blended, so dependent on sympathetic conditions, that they are not revealed to every one equally. Beauty is interpreted according to the mood and temperament of the individual. There is beauty in a brick wall when the mind is in harmony with its subject; there is beauty in ugliness where ugliness is not divorced from the soul; there is beauty in everything when youth stands on the threshold of its wonder world and gazes into the shining distances that disclose romance. Romance coruscates in shining distances, like the splendid bewilderment of the Northern Lights: one cannot reach out and grasp these wonders -- to take hold of romance is to lose it; to attempt to decrease the distance is to dull the golden vista and distort the fine sense of proportions.

As well attempt to bottle material fact with imagination; fermentation would inevitably set up and the result be catastrophe.