As I gaze I gradually become conscious of a faint luminousness in the eastern sky. This slowly increases and changes to a deep saffron, and then in eight or ten minutes that fades into a light bluish tinge – the gold turns to silver. After some minutes the sky, just at the point where the sun is to appear, begins to glow again, as if the silver were getting warm; a minute or two more and the brow of the great god is above the horizon line. His mere brow, as I try to fix my eye upon it, fairly smites me blind. The brow is magnified by the eye into the whole face. One realizes in these few seconds how rapidly the old earth turns on its axis. You witness the miracle of the transition of the dawn into day. The day is born in a twinkling.

A naturalist witnesses the birth of a new day in the Catskills.