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Excerpt: Twilight in the hills


    "There was a long twilight in these hills.  The sun departs, but the day remains.  A sort of weird, dim, elfin day, that dawns at sunset, and envelops and possesses the world.  The land is full of light, but it is the light of no heavenly sun.  It is a light equal everywhere, as though the earth strove to illumine itself, and succeeded with that labor. 
    "The stars are not yet out.  Now and then a pale moon rides in the sky, but it has no power, and the light is not from it.  The wind is usually gone; the air is soft, and the fragrance of the fields fills it like a perfume.  The noises of the day and of the creatures that go about by day cease, and the noises of the night and of the creatures that haunt the night begin.  The bat swoops and circles in the maddest action, but without a sound.  The eye sees him, but the ear hears nothing.  The whippoorwill begins his plaintive cry, and one hears, but does not see.
    "It is a world that we do not understand, for we are creatures of the sun, and we are fearful lest we come upon things at work here, of which we have no experience, and that may be able to justify themselves against our reason.  And so a man falls into silence when he travels in this twilight, and he looks and listens with his senses out on guard."


Source: Melville Davisson Post, "A Twilight Adventure" (1914).