GREAT POSSESSIONS

By David Grayson

CHAPTER I

THE WELL-FLAVOURED EARTH

"Sweet as Eden is the air And Eden-sweet the ray. No Paradise is lost for themWho foot by branching root and stem, And lightly with the woodland share The change of night and day. "

For these many years, since I have lived here in the country, I have hadit in my mind to write something about the odour and taste of thiswell-flavoured earth. The fact is, both the sense of smell and the senseof taste; have been shabbily treated in the amiable rivalry of thesenses. Sight and hearing have been the swift and nimble brothers, andsight especially, the tricky Jacob of the family, is keen upon thebusiness of seizing the entire inheritance, while smell, like hairyEsau, comes late to the blessing, hungry from the hills, and willing totrade its inheritance for a mess of pottage. 

I have always had a kind of errant love for the improvident andadventurous Esaus of the Earth. I think they smell a wilder fragrancethan I do, and taste sweeter things, and I have thought, therefore, ofbeginning a kind of fragrant autobiography, a chronicle of all the goododours and flavours that ever I have had in my life. 

As I grow older, a curious feeling comes often to me in the spring, asit comes this spring more poignantly than ever before, a sense of thetemporariness of all things, the swiftness of life, the sadness of abeauty that vanishes so soon, and I long to lay hold upon it as itpasses by all the handles that I can. I would not only see it and hearit, but I would smell it and taste it and touch it, and all with a newkind of intensity and eagerness. 

Harriet says I get more pleasure out of the smell of my supper than Iget out of the supper itself. 

"I never need to ring for you, " says she, "but only open the kitchendoor. In a few minutes I'll see you straighten up, lift your head, sniffa little, and come straight for the house. "

"The odour of your suppers, Harriet, " I said, "after a day in thefields, would lure a man out of purgatory. "

My father before me had a singularly keen nose. I remember well when Iwas a boy and drove with him in the wild North Country, often throughmiles of unbroken forest, how he would sometimes break a long silence, lift his head with sudden awareness, and say to me:

"David, I smell open fields. "

In a few minutes we were sure to come to a settler's cabin, a log barn, or a clearing. Among the free odours of the forest he had caught, afaroff, the common odours of the work of man. 

When we were tramping or surveying in that country, I have seen him stopsuddenly, draw in a long breath, and remark:

"Marshes, " or, "A stream yonder. "

Part of this strange keenness of sense, often noted by those who knewthat sturdy old cavalryman, may have been based, as so many of ourtalents are, upon a defect. My father gave all the sweet sounds of theworld, the voices of his sons, the songs of his daughters, to help freethe Southern slaves. He was deaf. 

It is well known that when one sense is defective the others fly to therescue, and my father's singular development of the sense of smell mayhave been due in part to this defect, though I believe it to have been, to a far larger degree, a native gift. Me had a downright good nose. Allhis life long he enjoyed with more than ordinary keenness the odour offlowers, and would often pick a sprig of wild rose and carry it alongwith him in his hand, sniffing at it from time to time, and he loved thelilac, as I do after him. To ill odours he was not less sensitive, andwas impatient of rats in the barn, and could smell them, among otherodours, the moment the door was opened. He always had a peculiarsensitiveness to the presence of animals, as of dogs, cats, muskrats, cattle, horses, and the like, and would speak of them long before he hadseen them or could know that they were about. 

I recall once on a wild Northern lake, when we were working along theshore in a boat, how he stopped suddenly and exclaimed:

"David, do you hear anything?"--for I, a boy, was ears for him in thosewilderness places. 

"No, Father. What is it?"

"Indians. "

And, sure enough, in a short time I heard the barking of their dogs andwe came soon upon their camp, where, I remember, they were drying deermeat upon a frame of poplar poles over an open fire. He told me that thesmoky smell of the Indians, tanned buckskin, parched wild rice, and thelike, were odours that carried far and could not be mistaken. 

My father had a big, hooked nose with long, narrow nostrils, I supposethat this has really nothing to do with the matter, although I havecome, after these many years, to look with a curious interest uponpeople's noses, since I know what a vehicle of delight they often are. My own nose is nothing to speak of, good enough as noses go--but I thinkI inherited from my father something of the power of enjoyment he hadfrom that sense, though I can never hope to become the accomplishedsmeller he was. 

I am moved to begin this chronicle because of my joy this morningearly--a May morning!--just after sunrise, when the shadows lay longand blue to the west and the dew was still on the grass, and I walked inthe pleasant spaces of my garden. It was so still. .. So still. .. Thatbirds afar off could be heard singing, and once through the crystal aircame the voice of a neighbour calling his cows. But the sounds and thesilences, the fair sights of meadow and hill I soon put aside, for thelilacs were in bloom and the bush-honeysuckles and the strawberries. Though no movement of the air was perceptible, the lilacs well knew theway of the wind, for if I stood to the north of them the odour was lessrich and free than to the south, and I thought I might pose as a prophetof wind and weather upon the basis of this easy magic, and predict thatthe breezes of the day would be from the north--as, indeed, they laterappeared to be. 

I went from clump to clump of the lilacs testing and comparing them withgreat joy and satisfaction. They vary noticeably in odour; the whitevarieties being the most delicate, while those tending to deep purpleare the richest. Some of the newer double varieties seem lessfragrant--and I have tested them now many times--than the old-fashionedsingle varieties which are nearer the native stock. Here I fancy oursmooth Jacob has been at work, and in the lucrative process of selectionfor the eye alone the cunning horticulturist has cheated us of ourrightful heritage of fragrance. I have a mind some time to practise theart of burbankry or other kind of wizardy upon the old lilac stock andselect for odour alone, securing ravishing original varieties--indeed, whole new gamuts of fragrance. 

I should devise the most animating names for my creations, such as theDouble Delicious, the Air of Arcady, the Sweet Zephyr, and others evenmore inviting, which I should enjoy inventing. Though I think surely Icould make my fortune out of this interesting idea, I present it freelyto a scent-hungry world--here it is, gratis!--for I have my time sofully occupied during all of this and my next two or three lives that Icannot attend to it. 

I have felt the same defect in the cultivated roses. While the odoursare rich, often of cloying sweetness, or even, as in certain whiteroses, having a languor as of death, they never for me equal thefragrance of the wild sweet rose that grows all about these hills, inold tangled fence rows, in the lee of meadow boulders, or by someunfrequented roadside. No other odour I know awakens quite such afeeling--light like a cloud, suggesting free hills, open country, sunnyair; and none surely has, for me, such an after-call. A whiff of thewild rose will bring back in all the poignancy of sad happiness a trainof ancient memories old faces, old scenes, old loves--and the wildthoughts I had when a boy. The first week of the wild-rose blooming, beginning here about the twenty-fifth of June, is always to me amemorable time. 

I was a long time learning how to take hold of nature, and think nowwith some sadness of all the life I lost in former years. The impressionthe earth gave me was confused: I was as one only half awake. A finemorning made me dumbly glad, a cool evening, after the heat of the day, and the work of it, touched my spirit restfully; but I could haveexplained neither the one nor the other. Gradually as I looked about meI began to ask myself, "Why is it that the sight of these common hillsand fields gives me such exquisite delight? And if it is beauty, why isit beautiful? And if I am so richly rewarded by mere glimpses, can I notincrease my pleasure with longer looks?"

I tried longer looks both at nature and at the friendly human creaturesall about me. I stopped often in the garden where I was working, orloitered a moment in the fields, or sat down by the roadside, andthought intently what it was that so perfectly and wonderfullysurrounded me; and thus I came to have some knowledge of the GreatSecret. It was, after all, a simple matter, as such matters usually arewhen we penetrate them, and consisted merely in shutting out all otherimpressions, feelings, thoughts, and concentrating the full energy ofthe attention upon what it was that I saw or heard at that instant. 

At one moment I would let in all the sounds of the earth, at another allthe sights. So we practise the hand at one time, the foot at another, orlearn how to sit or to walk, and so acquire new grace for the wholebody. Should we do less in acquiring grace for the spirit? It willastonish one who has not tried it how full the world is of soundscommonly unheard, and of sights commonly unseen, but in their nature, like the smallest blossoms, of a curious perfection and beauty. 

Out of this practice grew presently, and as it seems to meinstinctively, for I cannot now remember the exact time of itsbeginning, a habit of repeating under my breath, or even aloud, and in akind of singsong voice, fragmentary words and sentences describing whatit was that I saw or felt at the moment, as, for example:

"The pink blossoms of the wild crab-apple trees I see from the hill. .. . The reedy song of the wood thrush among the thickets of the wildcherry. .. . The scent of peach leaves, the odour of new-turned soil inthe black fields. .. . The red of the maples in the marsh, the white ofapple trees in bloom. .. . I cannot find Him out--nor know why I amhere. .. . "

Some form of expression, however crude, seemed to reenforce andintensify the gatherings of the senses; and these words, afterwardremembered, or even written down in the little book I sometimes carriedin my pocket, seemed to awaken echoes, however faint, of the exaltationof that moment in the woods or fields, and enabled me to live twicewhere formerly I had been able to live but once. 

It was by this simple process of concentrating upon what I saw or heardthat I increased immeasurably my own joy of my garden and fields andthe hills and marshes all about. A little later, for I was a slowlearner, I began to practise the same method with the sense of smell, and still later with the sense of taste. I said to myself, "I will nolonger permit the avid and eager eye to steal away my whole attention. Iwill learn to enjoy more completely all the varied wonders of theearth. "

So I tried deliberately shutting the doorways of both sight and hearing, and centring the industry of my spirit upon the flavours of the earth. Itested each odour narrowly, compared it well with remembered odours, andoften turned the impression I had into such poor words as I couldcommand. 

What a new and wonderful world opened to me then! My takings of natureincreased tenfold, a hundredfold, and I came to a new acquaintance withmy own garden, my own hills, and all the roads and fields aroundabout--and even the town took on strange new meanings for me. I cannotexplain it rightly, but it was as though I had found a new earth herewithin the old one, but more spacious and beautiful than any I had knownbefore. I have thought, often and often, that this world we live in sodumbly, so carelessly, would be more glorious than the tinsel heaven ofthe poets if only we knew how to lay hold upon it, if only we could winthat complete command of our own lives which is the end of our being. 

At first, as I said, I stopped my work, or loitered as I walked, inorder to see, or hear, or smell--and do so still, for I have enteredonly the antechamber of the treasure-house; but as I learned better themodest technic of these arts I found that the practice of them went wellwith the common tasks of the garden or farm, especially with those thatwere more or less monotonous, like cultivating corn, hoeing potatoes, and the like. 

The air is just as full of good sights and good odours for the worker asfor the idler, and it depends only upon the awareness, the aliveness, ofour own spirits whether we toil like dumb animals or bless our labouringhours with the beauty of life. Such enjoyment and a growing command ofour surroundings are possible, after a little practice, without takingmuch of that time we call so valuable and waste so sinfully. "I haven'ttime, " says the farmer, the banker, the professor, with a kind ofdisdain for the spirit of life, when, as a matter of fact, he has allthe time there is, all that anybody has--to wit, _this_ moment, thisgreat and golden moment!--but knows not how to employ it. He creeps whenhe might walk, walks when he might run, runs when he might fly--andlives like a woodchuck in the dark body of himself. 

Why, there are men in this valley who scout the idea that farming, carpentry, merchantry, are anything but drudgery, defend all the evilsknown to humankind with the argument that "a man must live, " and laughat any one who sees beauty or charm in being here, in working with thehands, or, indeed, in just living! While they think of themselvescannily as "practical" men, I think them the most impractical men Iknow, for in a world full of boundless riches they remain obstinatelypoor. They are unwilling to invest even a few of their dollars unearnedin the real wealth of the earth. For it is only the sense of the spiritof life, whether in nature or in other human beings, that lifts menabove the beasts and curiously leads them to God, who is the spirit bothof beauty and of friendliness. I say truly, having now reached the pointin my life where it seems to me I care only for writing that which ismost deeply true for me, that I rarely walk in my garden or upon thehills of an evening without thinking of God. It is in my garden that allthings become clearer to me, even that miracle whereby one who hasoffended may still see God; and this I think a wonderful thing. In mygarden I understand dimly why evil is in the world, and in my gardenlearn how transitory it is. 

Just now I have come in from work, and will note freshly one of the bestodours I have had to-day. As I was working in the corn, a lazy breezeblew across the meadows from the west, and after loitering a momentamong the blackberry bushes sought me out where I was busiest. Do youknow the scent of the blackberry? Almost all the year round it is atreasure-house of odours, even when the leaves first come out; but itreaches crescendo in blossom time when, indeed, I like it least, forbeing too strong. It has a curious fragrance, once well called by a poet"the hot scent of the brier, " and aromatically hot it is and sharp likethe briers themselves. At times I do not like it at all, for it gives mea kind of faintness, while at other times, as to-day, it fills me with astrange sense of pleasure as though it were the very breath of the spicyearth. It is also a rare friend of the sun, for the hotter and brighterthe day, the hotter and sharper the scent of the brier. 

Many of the commonest and least noticed of plants, flowers, trees, possess a truly fragrant personality if once we begin to know them. Ihad an adventure in my own orchard, only this spring, and made a finenew acquaintance in a quarter least of all expected. I had started downthe lane through the garden one morning in the most ordinary way, withno thought of any special experience, when I suddenly caught a whiff ofpure delight that stopped me short. 

"What now can _that_ be?" and I thought to myself that nature had playedsome new prank on me. 

I turned into the orchard, following my nose. It was not the peach buds, nor the plums, nor the cherries, nor yet the beautiful new colouredleaves of the grape, nor anything I could see along the grassy margin ofthe pasture. There were other odours all about, old friends of mine, butthis was some shy and pleasing stranger come venturing upon my land. 

A moment later I discovered a patch of low green verdure upon theground, and dismissed it scornfully as one of my ancient enemies. Butit is this way with enemies, once we come to know them, they often turnout to have a fragrance that is kindly. 

Well, this particular fierce enemy was a patch of chickweed. Chickweed!Invader of the garden, cossack of the orchard! I discovered, however, that it was in full bloom and covered with small, star-like whiteblossoms. 

"Well, now, " said I, "are you the guilty rascal?"

So I knelt there and took my delight of it and a rare, delicate goododour it was. For several days afterward I would not dig out the patch, for I said to myself, "What a cheerful claim it makes these early days, when most of the earth is still cold and dead, for a bit ofimmortality. "

The bees knew the secret already, and the hens and the blackbirds! And Ithought it no loss, but really a new and valuable pleasure, to divert mypath down the lane for several days that I might enjoy more fully thisnew odour, and make a clear acquaintance with something fine upon theearth I had not known before. 

CHAPTER II

OF GOOD AND EVIL ODOURS

Of all times of the day for good odours I think the early morning thevery best, although the evening just after sunset, if the air fallsstill and cool, is often as good. Certain qualities or states of theatmosphere seem to favour the distillation of good odours and I haveknown times even at midday when the earth was very wonderful to smell. There is a curious, fainting fragrance that comes only with sunshine andstill heat. Not long ago I was cutting away a thicket of wild spiraeawhich was crowding in upon the cultivated land. It was a hot day andthe leaves wilted quickly, giving off such a penetrating, faintingfragrance that I let the branches lie where they fell the afternoonthrough and came often back to smell of them, for it was a fine thingthus to discover an odour wholly new to me. 

I like also the first wild, sweet smell of new-cut meadow grass, not thefamiliar odour of new-mown hay, which comes a little later, and isworthy of its good report, but the brief, despairing odour of grass justcut down, its juices freshly exposed to the sun. One, as it richly inthe fields at the mowing. I like also the midday smell of peach leavesand peach-tree bark at the summer priming: and have never let any oneelse cut out the old canes from the blackberry rows in my garden for thegoodness of the scents which wait upon that work. 

Another odour I have found animating is the odour of burning wastage innew clearings or in old fields, especially in the evening when the smokedrifts low along the land and takes to itself by some strange chemicalprocess the tang of earthy things. It is a true saying that nothing willso bring back the emotion of a past time as a remembered odour. I havehad from a whiff of fragrance caught in a city street such a vividreturn of an old time and an old, sad scene that I have stopped, trembling there, with an emotion long spent and I thought forgotten. 

Once in a foreign city, passing a latticed gateway that closed in anarrow court, I caught the odour of wild sweet balsam. I do not know nowwhere it came from, or what could have caused it--but it stopped meshort where I stood, and the solid brick walls of that city rolled asidelike painted curtains, and the iron streets dissolved before my eyes, and with the curious dizziness of nostalgia, I was myself upon the hillof my youth--with the gleaming river in the valley, and a hawk sailingmajestically in the high blue of the sky, and all about and everywherethe balsams--and the balsams--full of the sweet, wild odours of thenorth, and of dreaming boyhood. 

And there while my body, the shell of me, loitered in that strange city, I was myself four thousand miles and a quarter of a century away, reliving, with a conscious passion that boyhood never knew, a momentcaught up, like a torch, out of the smouldering wreckage of the past. 

Do not tell me that such things die! They all remain with us-all thesights, and sounds, and thoughts of by-gone times awaiting only thewhiff from some latticed gateway, some closed-in court to spring againinto exuberant life. If only we are ready for the great moment!

As for the odour of the burning wastage of the fields at evening Iscarcely know if I dare say it. I find it produces in the blood of me akind of primitive emotion, as though it stirred memories older than mypresent life. Some drowsy cells of the brain awaken to a familiarstimulus--the odour of the lodge-fire of the savage, the wigwam of theIndian. Racial memories!

But it is not the time of the day, nor the turn of the season, nor yetthe way of the wind that matters most but the ardour and glow weourselves bring to the fragrant earth. It is a sad thing to reflect thatin a world so overflowing with goodness of smell, of fine sights andsweet sounds, we pass by hastily and take so little of them. Days passwhen we see no beautiful sight, hear no sweet sound, smell no memorableodour: when we exchange no single word of deeper understanding with afriend. We have lived a day and added nothing to our lives! A blind, grubbing, senseless life--that!

It is a strange thing, also, that instead of sharpening the tools bywhich we take hold of life we make studied efforts to dull them. We seemto fear life and early begin to stop our ears and close our eyes lest wehear and see too much: we clog our senses and cloud our minds. We seekdull security and ease and cease longer to desire adventure andstruggle. And then--the tragedy of it--the poet we all have in us inyouth begins to die, the philosopher in us dies, the martyr in us dies, so that the long, long time beyond youth with so many of us becomes abusy death. And this I think truer of men than of women: beyond fortymany women just begin to awaken to power and beauty, but most men beyondthat age go on dying. The task of the artist, whether poet, or musician, or painter, is to keep alive the perishing spirit of free adventure inmen: to nourish the poet, the prophet, the martyr, we all have in us. 

One's sense of smell, like the sense of taste, is sharpest when he ishungry, and I am convinced also that one sees and hears best whenunclogged with food, undulled with drink, undrugged with smoke. For me, also, weariness, though not exhaustion, seems to sharpen all thesenses. Keenness goes with leanness. When I have been working hard ortramping the country roads in the open air and come in weary and hungryat night and catch the fragrance of the evening along the road or uponthe hill, or at barn-doors smell the unmilked cows, or at the doorway, the comfortable odours of cooking supper how good that all is! At suchtimes I know Esau to the core: the forthright, nature-loving, simple manhe was, coming in dabbled with the blood of hunted animals and hungryfor the steaming pottage. 

It follows that if we take excessive joys of one sense, as of taste, nature, ever seeking just balances, deprives us of the full enjoyment ofthe others, "I am stuffed, cousin, " cries Beatrice in the play, "Icannot smell. " "I have drunk, " remarks the Clown in Arcady, "what areroses to me?" We forget that there are five chords in the great scale oflife--sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and--few of us ever masterthe chords well enough to get the full symphony of life, but aresomething like little pig-tailed girls playing Peter Piper with onefinger while all the music of the universe is in the Great Instrument, and all to be had for the taking. 

Of most evil odours, it can be said that they are temporary orunnecessary: and any unpleasant odour, such as that of fruit sprays inspring, or fertilizer newly spread on the land, can be borne and evenwelcomed if it is appropriate to the time and place. Some smells, evilat first, become through usage not unpleasant. I once stopped with awolf-trapper in the north country, who set his bottle of bait outsidewhen I came in. He said it was "good and strong" and sniffed it withappreciation. I agreed with him that it was strong. To him it was notunpleasant, though made of the rancid fat of the muscallonge. All natureseems to strive against evil odours, for when she warns us of decay sheis speeding decay: and a manured field produces later the best of allodours. Almost all shut-in places sooner or later acquire an evil odour:and it seems a requisite for good smells that there be plenty ofsunshine and air; and so it is with the hearts and souls of men. If theyare long shut in upon themselves they grow rancid. 

CHAPTER III

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE!

"Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn--Look to this day! For it is Life, The very Life of Life!"

On a spring morning one has only to step out into the open country, lifthis head to the sky--and follow his nose. .. . 

It was a big and golden morning, and Sunday to boot, and I walked downthe lane to the lower edge of the field, where the wood and the marshbegin. The sun was just coming up over the hills and all the air wasfresh and clear and cool. High in the heavens a few fleecy clouds weredrifting, and the air was just enough astir to waken the hemlocks intofaint and sleepy exchanges of confidence. 

It seemed to me that morning that the world was never before so high, soairy, so golden, All filled to the brim with the essence of sunshineand spring morning--so that one's spirit dissolved in it, became a partof it. Such a morning! Such a morning!

From that place and just as I was I set off across the open land. 

It was the time of all times for good odours--soon after sunrise--beforethe heat of the day had drawn off the rich distillations of the night. 

In that keen moment I caught, drifting, a faint but wild fragrance uponthe air, and veered northward full into the way of the wind. I could notat first tell what this particular odour was, nor separate it from thegeneral good odour of the earth; but I followed it intently across themoor-like open land. Once I thought I had lost it entirely, or that thefaint northern airs had shifted, but I soon caught it clearly again, andjust as I was saying to myself, "I've got it, I've got it!"--for it is agreat pleasure to identify a friendly odour in the fields--I saw, nearthe bank of the brook, among ferns and raspberry bushes, a thorn-appletree in full bloom. 

"So there you are!" I said. 

I hastened toward it, now in the full current and glory of itsfragrance. The sun, looking over the taller trees to the east, hadcrowned the top of it with gold, so that it was beautiful to see; and itwas full of honey bees as excited as I. 

A score of feet onward toward the wind, beyond the thorn-apple tree, Ipassed wholly out of the range of its fragrance into another world, andbegan trying for some new odour. After one or two false scents, for thispursuit has all the hazards known to the hunter, I caught an odour longknown to me, not strong, nor yet very wonderful, but distinctive. It ledme still a little distance northward to a sunny slope just beyond a bitof marsh, and, sure enough, I found an old friend, the wild sweetgeranium, a world of it, in full bloom, and I sat down there for sometime to enjoy it fully. 

Beyond that, and across a field wild with tangles of huckleberry bushesand sheep laurel where the bluets and buttercups were blooming, and inshady spots the shy white violet, I searched for the odour of a certainclump of pine trees I discovered long ago. I knew that I must come uponit soon, but could not tell just when or where. I held up a moistenedfinger to make sure of the exact direction of the wind, and bearing, then, a little eastward, soon came full upon it--as a hunter mightsurprise a deer in the forest. I crossed the brook a second time andthrough a little marsh, making it the rule of the game never to lose foran instant the scent I was following--even though I stopped in a lowspot to admire a mass of thrifty blue flags, now beginning to bloom--andcame thus to the pines I was seeking. They are not great trees, nornoble, but gnarled and angular and stunted, for the soil in that placeis poor and thin, and the winds in winter keen; but the brown blanket ofneedles they spread and the shade they offer the traveller are not lesshospitable; nor the fragrance they give off less enchanting. The odourof the pine is one I love. 

I sat down there in a place I chose long ago--a place already asfamiliar with pleasing memories as a favourite room--so that I wonderthat some of the notes I have written there do not of themselves exhalethe very odour of the pines. 

And all about was hung a fair tapestry of green, and the earthy floorwas cleanly carpeted with brown, and the roof above was in archedmosaic, the deep, deep blue of the sky seen through the gnarled andknotted branches of the pines. Through a little opening among thetrees, as through a window, I could see the cattle feeding in the widemeadows, all headed alike, and yellow butterflies drifted across theopen spaces, and there were bumblebees and dragonflies. And presently Iheard some one tapping, tapping, at the door of the wood and glancing upquickly I saw my early visitor. There he was, as neighbourly as youplease, and not in the least awed by my intrusion; there he was, far outon the limb of a dead tree, stepping energetically up and down, like asailor reefing a sail, and rapping and tapping as he worked--a downywoodpecker. 

"Good morning, sir, " I said. 

He stopped for scarcely a second, cocked one eye at me, and went back tohis work again. Who was I that I should interrupt his breakfast?

And I was glad I was there, and I began enumerating, as though I werethe accredited reporter for the _Woodland Gazette_, all the good news ofthe day. 

"The beech trees. " said aloud, "have come at last to full leafage. Thewild blackberries are ready to bloom, the swamp roses are budded. Brownplanted fields I see, and drooping elms, and the young crows cry fromtheir nests on the knoll. .. . I know now that, whoever I am, whatever Ido, I am welcome here; the meadows are as green this spring for Tom thedrunkard, and for Jim the thief, as for Jonathan the parson, or for Waltthe poet: the wild cherry blooms as richly, and the odour of the pine isas sweet--"

At that moment, like a flame for clearness, I understood some of thedeep and simple things of life, as that we are to be like the friendlypines, and the elm trees, and the open fields, and reject no man andjudge no man. Once, a long time ago, I read a sober treatise by one whotried to prove with elaborate knowledge that, upon the whole, good wastriumphant in this world, and that probably there was a God, and Iremember going out dully afterward upon the hill, for I was weighed downwith a strange depression, and the world seemed to me a hard, cold, narrow place where good must be heavily demonstrated in books. And as Isat there the evening fell, a star or two came out in the clear blue ofthe sky, and suddenly it became all simple to me, so that I laughedaloud at that laborious big-wig for spending so many futile years inseeking doubtful proof of what he might have learned in one rare homeupon my hill. And far more than he could prove far more. 

As I came away from that place I knew I should never again be quite thesame person I was before. 

[Illustration: And as I sat there the evening fell, a star or two cameout in the clear blue of the sky]

Well, we cannot remain steadily upon the heights. At least I cannot, and would not if I could. After I have been out about so long on such anadventure as this, something lets go inside of me, and I come down outof the mountain--and yet know deeply that I have been where the bush wasburning; and have heard the Voice in the Fire. 

So it was yesterday morning. I realized suddenly that I washungry--commonly, coarsely hungry. My whole attention, I was going tosay my whole soul, shifted to the thought of ham and eggs! This may seema tremendous anti-climax, but it is, nevertheless, a sober report ofwhat happened. At the first onset of this new mood, the ham-and-eggsmood, let us call it, I was a little ashamed or abashed at theremembrance of my wild flights, and had a laugh at the thought of myselffloundering around in the marshes and fields a mile from home, whenHarriet, no doubt, had breakfast waiting for me! What absurd, contradictory, inconsistent, cowardly creatures we are, anyway!

The house seemed an inconceivable distance away, and the only real thingin the world the gnawing emptiness under my belt. And I was wet to myknees, and the tangled huckleberry bashes and sheep laurel and hardbackI had passed through so joyously a short time before now clung heavilyabout my legs as I struggled through them. And the sun was hot andhigh--and there were innumerable small, black buzzing flies. 

To cap the climax, whom should I meet as I was crossing the fence intothe lower land but my friend Horace, He had been out early looking for acow that had dropped her calf in the woods, and was now driving themslowly up the lane, the cow a true pattern of solicitous motherhood, thecalf a true pattern of youth, dashing about upon uncertain legs. 

"Takin' the air, David?"

I amuse Horace. Horace is an important man in this community. He hasbig, solid barns, and money in the bank, and a reputation forhardheadedness. He is also known as a "driver"; and has had sore troublewith a favourite son. He believes in "goin' it slow" and "playin' safe, "and he is convinced that "ye can't change human nature. "

His question came to me with a kind of shock. I imagined with avividness impossible to describe what Horace would think if I answeredhim squarely and honestly, if I were to say:

"I've been down in the marshes following my nose--enjoying the thornapples and the wild geraniums, talking with a woodpecker and reportingthe morning news of the woods for an imaginary newspaper. "

I was hungry, and in a mood to smile at myself anyway (good-humouredlyand forgivingly as we always smile at ourselves!) before I met Horace, and the flashing vision I had of Horace's dry, superior smile finishedme. Was there really anything in this world but cows and calves, andgreat solid barns, and oatcrops, and cash in the bank?

"Been in the brook?" asked Horace, observing my wet legs. 

Talk about the courage to face cannon and Cossacks! It is nothing to thecourage required to speak aloud in broad daylight of the finest thingswe have in us! I was not equal to it. 

"Oh, I've been down for a tramp in the marsh, " I said, trying to put himoff. 

But Horace is a Yankee of the Yankees and loves nothing better than tochase his friends into corners with questions, and leave them ultimatelywith the impression that they are somehow less sound, sensible, practical, than he is and he usually proves it, not because he is right, but because he is sure, and in a world of shadowy halt-beliefs andhalf-believers he is without doubts. 

"What ye find down there?" asked Horace. 

"Oh, I was just looking around to see how the spring was coming on. "

"Hm-m, " said Horace, eloquently, and when I did not reply, he continued, "Often git out in the morning as early as this?"

"Yes, " I said, "often. "

"And do you find things any different now from what they would be laterin the day?"

At this the humour of the whole situation dawned on me and I began torevive. When things grow hopelessly complicated, and we can't laugh, wedo either one of two things: we lie or we die. But if we can laugh, wecan fight! And be honest!

"Horace, " I said, "I know what you are thinking about. "

Horace's face remained perfectly impassive, but there was a glint ofcuriosity in his eye. 

"You've been thinking I've been wasting my time beating around downthere in the swamp just to look at things and smell of things--whichyou wouldn't do. You think I'm a kind of impractical dreamer, now, don'tyou, Horace? I'll warrant you've told your wife just that more thanonce. Come, now!"

I think I made a rather shrewd hit, for Horace looked uncomfortable anda little foolish. 

"Come now, honest!" I laughed and looked him in the eye. 

"Waal, now, ye see--"

"Of course you do, and I don't mind it in the least. "

A little dry gleam of humour came in his eye. 

"Ain't ye?"

It's a fine thing to have it straight out with a friend. 

"No, " I said, "I'm the practical man and you're the dreamer. I've rarelyknown in all my life, Horace, such a confirmed dreamer as you are, nor amore impractical one. "

Horace laughed. 

"How do ye make that out?"

With this my spirit returned to me and I countered with a question asgood as his. It is as valuable in argument as in war to secure theoffensive. 

"Horace, what are you working for, anyhow?"

This is always a devastating shot. Ninety-nine out of every hundredhuman beings are desperately at work grubbing, sweating, worrying, thinking, sorrowing, enjoying, without in the least knowing why. 

"Why, to make a living--same as you, " said Horace. 

"Oh, come now, if I were to spread the report in town that a poorneighbour of mine, that's you, Horace, was just making his living, thathe himself had told me so, what would you say? Horace, what are youworking for? It's something more than a mere living. "

"Waal, now, I'll tell ye, if ye want it straight, I'm layin' aside alittle something for a rainy day. "

"A little something!" this in the exact inflection of irony by whichhere in the country we express our opinion that a friend has really agood deal more laid aside than anybody knows about. Horace smiled alsoin the exact manner of one so complimented. 

"Horace, what are you going to do with that thirty thousand dollars?"

"Thirty thousand!" Horace looks at me and smiles, and I look at Horaceand smile. 

"Honest now!"

"Waal, I'll tell ye--a little peace and comfort for me and Josie in ourold age, and a little something to make the children remember us whenwe're gone. Isn't that worth working for?"

He said this with downright seriousness. I did not press him further, but if I had tried I could probably have got the even deeper admissionof that faith that lies, like bed rock, in the thought of most men--thathonesty and decency here will not be without its reward there, howeverthey may define the "there. " Some "prophet's paradise to come!"

"I knew it!" I said. "Horace, you're a dreamer, too. You are dreaming ofpeace and comfort in your old age, a little quiet house in town whereyou won't have to labour as hard as you do now, where you won't beworried by crops and weather, and where Mrs. Horace will be able to restafter so many years of care and work and sorrow--a kind of earthlyheaven! And you are dreaming of leaving a bit to your children andgrandchildren, and dreaming of the gratitude they will express. Alldreams, Horace!"

"Oh, waal---"

"The fact is, you are working for a dream, and living on dreams--isn'tthat true?"

"Waal, now, if you mean it that way----"

"I see I haven't got you beaten yet, Horace!"

He smiled broadly, "We are all amiable enough with our own dreams. You think that what youare working for--your dream--is somehow sounder and more practical thanwhat I am working for. "

Horace started to reply, but had scarcely debouched from his trencheswhen I opened on him with one of my twenty-fours. 

"How do you know that you are ever going to be old?"

It hit. 

"And if you do grow old, how do you know that thirty thousanddollars--oh, we'll call it that--is really enough, provided you don'tlose it before, to buy peace and comfort for you, or that what you leaveyour children will make either you or them any happier? Peace andcomfort and happiness are terribly expensive, Horace--and prices havebeen going up fast since this war began!"

Horace looked at me uncomfortably, as men do in the world when you shakethe foundations of the tabernacle. I have thought since that I probablypressed him too far; but these things go deep with me. 

"No, Horace, " I said, "you are the dreamer--and the impractical dreamerat that!"

For a moment Horace answered nothing; and we both stood still there inthe soft morning sunshine with the peaceful fields and woods all aboutus, two human atoms struggling hotly with questions too large for us. The cow and the new calf were long out of sight. Horace made a motion asif to follow them up the lane, but I held him with my glittering eye--asI think of it since, not without a kind of amusement at my ownseriousness. 

"I'm the practical man, Horace, for I want my peace now, and myhappiness now, and my God now. I can't wait. My barns may burn or mycattle die, or the solid bank where I keep my deferred joy may fail, orI myself by to-morrow be no longer here. "

So powerfully and vividly did this thought take possession of me that Icannot now remember to have said a decent good-bye to Horace (nevermind, he knows me!). At least when I was halfway up the hill I foundmyself gesticulating with one clenched fist and saying to myself with akind of passion: "Why wait to be peaceful? Why not he peaceful now? Whynot be happy now? Why not be rich now?"

For I think it truth that a life uncommanded now is uncommanded; a lifeunenjoyed now is unenjoyed; a life not lived wisely now is not livedwisely: for the past is gone and no one knows the future. 

As for Horace is he convinced that he is an impractical dreamer. Not abit of it! He was merely flurried for a moment in his mind, and probablythinks me now, more than ever before, just what I think him. Absurdplace, isn't it, this world?

So I reached home at last. You have no idea, unless you have tried ityourself, how good breakfast tastes alter a three-mile tramp in thesharp morning air. The odour of ham and eggs, and new muffins, andcoffee, as you come up the hill, there is an odour for you! And it wasgood to see Harriet. 

"Harriet, " I said, "you are a sight for tired eyes. "

CHAPTER IV

THE GREEN PEOPLE

I have always had a fondness, when upon my travels about the world ofthe near-by woods and fields, for nipping a bit of a twig here and thereand tasting the tart or bitter quality of it. I suppose the instinctdescends to me from the herbivorous side of my distant ancestry. I lovea spray of white cedar, especially the spicy, sweet inside bark, or apine needle, or the tender, sweet, juicy end of a spike of timothy grassdrawn slowly from its close-fitting sheath, or a twig of the birch thattastes like wintergreen. 

I think this no strange or unusual instinct, for I have seen many otherpeople doing it, especially farmers around here, who go through thefields nipping the new oats, testing the red-top, or chewing a bit ofsassafras bark. I have in mind a clump of shrubbery in the town road, where an old house once stood, of the kind called here by some the"sweet-scented shrub, " and the brandies of it nearest the road are quiteclipped and stunted I'm being nipped at by old ladies who pass that wayand take to it like cat to catnip. 

For a long time this was a wholly unorganized, indeed all butunconscious, pleasure, a true pattern of the childish way we take holdof the earth; but when I began to come newly alive to all things as Ihave already related--I chanced upon this curious, undeveloped instinct. 

"What is it I have here?" I asked myself, for I thought this might be anew handle for getting hold of nature. 

Along one edge of my field is a natural hedge of wild cherry, young elmsand ashes, dogwood, black raspberry bushes and the like, which has longbeen a pleasure to the eye, especially in the early morning when theshadows of it lie long and cool upon the meadow. Many times I havewalked that way to admire it, or to listen for the catbirds that nestthere, or to steal upon a certain gray squirrel who comes out from hishome in the chestnut tree on a fine morning to inspect his premises. 

It occurred to me one day that I would make the acquaintance of thishedge in a new way; so I passed slowly along it where the branches ofthe trees brushed my shoulder and picked a twig here and there and bitit through. "This is cherry, " I said; "this is elm, this is dogwood. "And it was a fine adventure to know old friends in new ways, for I hadnever thought before to test the trees and shrubs by their taste andsmell. After that, whenever I passed that way, I closed my eyes andtried for further identifications by taste, and was soon able to tellquickly half a dozen other varieties of trees, shrubs, and smallerplants along that bit of meadow. 

Presently, as one who learns to navigate still water near shore longsfor more thrilling voyages, I tried the grassy old roads in the woods, where young trees and other growths were to be found in great variety:and had a joy of it I cannot describe, for old and familiar places werethus made new and wonderful to me. And when I think of those places, now, say in winter, I grasp them more vividly and strongly than ever Idid before, for I think not only how they look, but how they taste andsmell, and I even know many of the growing things by the touch of them. It is certain that our grasp of life is in direct proportion to thevariety and warmth of the ways in which we lay hold of it. No thought nobeauty and no joy. 

On these excursions I have often reflected that if I were blind, Ishould still find here unexplored joys of life, and should make it apoint to know all the friendly trees and shrubs around about by thetaste or smell or touch of them. I think seriously that this method ofwidening the world of the blind, and increasing their narrower joys, might well be developed, though it would be wise for such as do take itto borrow first the eyes of a friend to see that no poison ivy, whichcertain rascally birds plant along our fences and hedges, is lurkingabout. 

Save for this precaution I know of nothing that will injure the taster, though he must be prepared, here and there, for shocks and thrills ofbitterness. A lilac leaf, for example, and to a scarcely lesser degreethe willow and the poplar are, when bitten through, of a penetrating andintense bitterness; but do no harm, and will daunt no one who is reallyadventurous. There is yet to be written a botany, or, better yet, a bookof nature, for the blind. 

It is by knowing human beings that we come to understand them, and byunderstanding them come to love them, and so it is with the greenpeople. When I was a boy in the wild north country trees were enemies tobe ruthlessly fought--to be cut down, sawed, split, burned--anything tobe rid of them. The ideal in making a home place was to push the forestas far away from it as possible. But now, when I go to the woods, it islike going among old and treasured friends, and with riper acquaintancethe trees come to take on, curiously, a kind of personality, so that Iam much fonder of some trees than of others, and instinctively seek outthe companionship of certain trees in certain moods, as one will hisfriends. 

I love the unfolding beeches in spring, and the pines in winter; theelms I care for afar off, like great aloof men, whom I can admire; butfor friendly confidences give me an apple tree in an old green meadow. 

[Illustration: For friendly confidences give me an apple tree in an oldgreen meadow. ]

In this more complete understanding I have been much aided by gettinghold of my friends of the hedges and hills in the new ways I havedescribed. At times I even feel that I have become a fully acceptedmember of the Fraternity of the Living Earth, for I have alreadyreceived many of the benefits which go with that association; and I knownow for a certainty that it makes no objection to its members becausethey are old, or sad, or have sinned, but welcomes them all alike. 

The essential taste of the cherry and peach and all their numerousrelatives is, in variation, that of the peach pit, so that the wholetribe may be easily recognized, though it was some time before I couldtell with certainty the peach from the cherry. The oak shoot, whenchewed a little, tastes exactly like the smell of new oak lumber; themaple has a peculiar taste and smell of its own that I can find nocomparison for, and the poplar is one of the bitterest trees that ever Ihave tasted. The trees--pines, spruces, hemlocks, balsams, cedars--areto me about the pleasantest of all, both in taste and odour, and thoughthe spruces and pines taste and smell much alike at first, one soonlearns to distinguish them. The elm has a rather agreeable, nondescript, bitterish taste, but the linden is gummy and of a mediocre quality, likethe tree itself, which I dislike. Some of the sweetest floweringshrubs, such as the lilac, have the bitterest of leaves and twigs or, like certain kinds of clematis, have a seed that when green is sharperthan cayenne pepper, while others, like the rose, are pleasanter inflavour. The ash tree is not too bitter and a little sour. 

I give here only a few of the commoner examples, for I wish to make thisno tedious catalogue of the flavours of the green people. I am not ascientist, nor would wish to be taken for one. Only last winter I had mypretensions sadly shocked when I tasted twigs cut from various trees andshrubs and tried to identify them by taste or by smell, and while it wasa pleasing experiment I found I could not certainly place above half ofthem; partly, no doubt, because many growing things keep their flavourswell wrapped up in winter. No, I have not gone far upon this pleasantroad, but neither am I in any great hurry; for there yet remains muchtime in this and my future lives to conquer the secrets of the earth. Iplan to devote at least one entire life to science, and may find I needseveral!

One great reason why the sense of taste and the sense of smell have notthe same honour as the sense of sight or of hearing is that no way hasyet been found to make a true art of either. For sight, we havepainting, sculpturing, photography, architecture, and the like; and forhearing, music; and for both, poetry and the drama. But the other sensesare more purely personal, and have not only been little studied orthought about, but are the ones least developed, and most dimmed andclogged by the customs of our lives. 

For the sense of smell we have, indeed, the perfumer's art, but a poorrudimentary art it is, giving little freedom for the artist who woulddraw his inspirations freshly from nature. I can, indeed, describepoorly in words the odours of this June morning--the mingled lilacs, late wild cherries, new-broken soil, and the fragrance of the sun ongreen verdure, for there are here both lyrical and symphonic odours--buthow inadequate it is! I can tell you what I feel and smell and taste, and give you, perhaps, a desire another spring to spend the months ofMay and June in the country, but I can scarcely make you live again thevery moment of life I have lived, which is the magic quality of the bestart. The art of the perfumer which, like all crude art, thrives uponblatancy, does not make us go to gardens, or love the rose, but ofteninstils in us a kind of artificiality, so that perfumes, so far frombeing an inspiration to us, increasing our lives, become often the badgeof the abnormal, used by those unsatisfied with simple, clean, naturalthings. 

And as a people deficient in musical art delights in ragtime tunes, so apeople deficient in the true art of tasting and smelling delights inragtime odours and ragtime tastes. 

I do not know that the three so-called lesser senses will ever beorganized to the point where they are served by well-established arts, but this I do know--that there are three great ways of entering upon abetter understanding of this magic earth which are now neglected. 

I think we have come upon hasty and heated days, and are too muchmastered by the god of hurry and the swift and greedy eye. We acceptflashing pictures of life for life itself; we rush here and rush thereand, having arrived, rush away again--to what sensible purpose? Be stilla little! Be still!

I do not mean by stillness, stagnation not yet lazy contentment, butlife more deeply thought about, more intensely realized, an activity soconcentrated that it is quiet. Be still then!

So it is that, though I am no worshipper of the old, I think the oldergardeners had in some ways a better practice of the art than we have, for they planted not for the eye alone but for the nose and the sense oftaste and even, in growing such plants as the lamb's tongue, to gratify, curiously, the sense of touch. They loved the scented herbs, andappropriately called them simples. Some of these old simples I amgreatly fond of, and like to snip a leaf as I go by to smell or taste;but many of them, I here confess, have for me a rank and culinaryodour--as sage and thyme and the bold scarlet monarda, sometimes calledbergamot. 

But if their actual fragrance is not always pleasing, and their uses arenow grown obscure, I love well the names of many of them--whether fromancient association or because the words themselves fall pleasantly uponthe ear, as, for example, sweet marjoram and dill, anise and summersavoury, lavender and sweet basil. Coriander! Caraway! Cumin! And"there's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember, . .. There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you: and here'ssome for me--" All sweet names that one loves to roll under his tongue. 

I have not any great number of these herbs in my own garden, but, when Igo among those I do have, I like to call them by their familiar names asI would a dignified doctor or professor, if ever I knew him well enough. 

It is in this want of balance and quietude that the age fails most. Weare all for action, not at all for reflection; we think there are easyways to knowledge and shortcuts to perfection; we are for laws ratherthan for life. 

And this reminds me inevitably of a mellow-spirited old friend who livesnot a thousand miles from here--I must not tell his name--whose greatestword is "proportion. " At this moment, as I write, I can hear the roll ofhis resonant old voice on the syllable p-o-r--prop-o-rtion. He is thekind of man good to know and to trust. 

If ever I bring him a hard problem, as, indeed, I delight to do, it is afine thing to see him square himself to meet it. A light comes in hiseye, he draws back his chin a little and exclaims occasionally:"Well--well!"

He will have all the facts and circumstances fully mobilized, standingup side by side before him like an awkward squad, and there's nothingmore awkward than some facts that have to stand out squarely indaylight! And he inquires into their ancestry, makes them run out theirtongues, and pokes them once or twice in the ribs, to make sure thatthey are lively and robust facts capable of making a good fight fortheir lives. He never likes to see any one thing too large, as a church, a party, a reform, a new book, or a new fashion, lest he see somethingelse too small; but will have everything, as he says, in trueproportion. If he occasionally favours a little that which is old, solid, well-placed, it is scarcely to be measured to him as a fault inan age so overwhelmed with the shiny new. 

He is a fine, up-standing, hearty old gentleman with white hair and rosycheeks, and the bright eyes of one who has lived all his life withtemperance. One incident I cannot resist telling, though it has nothingdirectly to do with this story, but it will let you know what kind of aman my old friend is, and when all is said, it would be a fine thing toknow about any man. Not long ago he was afflicted with a serious loss, aloss that would have crushed some men, but when I met him not longafterward, though the lines around his eyes were grown deeper, hegreeted me in his old serene, courtly manner, When I would havecomforted him with my sympathy, for I felt myself near enough to speakof his loss, he replied calmly:

"How can we know whether a thing is evil until we reach the end of it?It may be good!"

One of the events I esteem among the finest of the whole year is my oldfriend's birthday party. Every winter, on the twenty-sixth of February, a party of his friends drop in to see him. Some of us go out of habit, drawn by our affection for the old gentleman; others, I think, heinvites, for he knows to perfection the delicate shadings ofcompanionship which divide those who come unbidden from those, not lessloved but shyer, who must be summoned. 

Now this birthday gathering has one historic ceremony which none of uswould miss, because it expresses so completely the essence of ourfriend's generous and tolerant, but just, nature. He is, as I have said, a temperate man, and dislikes as much as any one I know the wholealcohol business; but living in a community where the struggle fortemperance has often been waged intemperately, and where there is alurking belief that cudgelling laws can make men virtuous, he publishesabroad once a year his declaration of independence. 

After we have been with our friend for an hour or so, and are wellwarmed and happy with the occasion, he rises solemnly and goes to thetoby-closet at the end of his generous fireplace, where the apple-logspecially cut for the occasion is burning merrily, and as we all fallsilent, knowing well what is coming, he unlocks the door and takes fromthe shelf a bottle of old peach brandy which, having uncorked, hegravely smells of and possibly lets his nearest neighbour smell of too. Then he brings from the sideboard a server set with diminutive glassesthat have been polished until they shine for the great occasion, and, having filled them all with the ripe liquor, he passes them around toeach of us. We have all risen and are becomingly solemn as he nowproposes the toast of the year--and it is always the same toast:

"Here's to moderation--in all things!"

He takes a sip or two, and continues:

"Here's to temperance--the queen of the virtues. "

So we all drink off our glasses. Our mellow old friend smacks his lips, corks the tall bottle, and returns it to his toby-closet, where itreposes undisturbed for another year. 

"And now, gentlemen, " he says, heartily, "let us go in to dinner. ". .. 

As I think of it, now that it is written, this story bears no very closerelationship to my original subject, and yet it seemed to follownaturally enough as I set it down, and to belong with the simple andwell-flavoured things of the garden and fields; and recalling the adviceof Cobbett to his nephew on the art of writing, "never to alter athought, for that which has come of itself into your mind is likely topass into that of another more readily and with more effect thananything which you can by reflection invent, " I leave it here just as Iwrote it, hoping that the kinship of my genial old friend with simpleand natural and temperate things may plainly appear. 

CHAPTER V

PLACES OF RETIREMENT

"Good God, how sweet are all things here!How beautiful the fields appear! How cleanly do we feed and lie!Lord, what good hours do we keep!How quietly we sleep!"

CHARLES COTTON (a friend of Izaak Walton)

_April 29th_. 

I have been spending a Sunday of retirement in the woods. I came outwith a strange, deep sense of depression, and though I knew it wasmyself and not the world that was sad, yet I could not put it away fromme. . .. As I write, the wood seems full of voices, the little rustlingof leaves, the minute sounds of twigs chafing together, the cry of frogsfrom the swamp so steady and monotonous that it scarcely arrestsattention. Of odours, a-plenty! Just behind me, so that by turning myhead I can see into their cool green depths, are a number of hemlocktrees, the breath of which is incalculably sweet. All the earth the veryearth itself has a good rich growing odour, pleasant to smell. 

These things have been here a thousand years a million years and yetthey are not stale, but are ever fresh, ever serene, ever here to loosenone's crabbed spirit and make one quietly happy. It seems to me I couldnot live if it were not possible often to come thus alone to the woods. 

. .. On later walking I discover that here and there on warm southernslopes the dog-tooth violet is really in bloom, and worlds of hepatica, both lavender and white, among the brown leaves. One of the notablesights of the hillsides at this time of the year is the striped maple, the long wands rising straight and chaste among thickets ofless-striking young birches and chestnuts, and having a bud of adelicate pink--a marvel of minute beauty. A little trailing arbutus Ifound and renewed my joy with one of the most exquisite odours of allthe spring; Solomon's seal thrusting up vivid green cornucopias from thelifeless earth, and often near a root or stone the red partridge berriesamong their bright leaves. The laurel on the hills is sharply visible, especially when among deciduous trees, and along the old brown roads arepatches of fresh wintergreen. In a cleft of the hills near the top ofNorwottuck, though the day is warm, I found a huge snowbank--the lastheld trench of old winter, the last guerilla of the cold, driven to thefastnesses of the hills. .. . I have enjoyed this day without trying. After the first hour or so of it all the worries dropped away, all theambitions, all the twisted thoughts--

It is strange how much thrilling joy there is in the discovery of theages-old miracle of returning life in the woods: each green adventurer, each fragrant joy, each bird-call--and the feel of the soft, warmsunshine upon one's back after months of winter. On any terms life isgood. The only woe, the only Great Woe, is the woe of never having beenborn. Sorrow, yes; failure, yes; weakness, yes the sad loss of dearfriends--yes! But oh, the good God: I still live!

Being alone without feeling alone is one of the great experiences oflife, and he who practises it has acquired an infinitely valuablepossession. People fly to crowds for happinesss not knowing that all thehappiness they find there they must take with them. Thus they divert anddistract that within them which creates power and joy, until by flyingalways away from themselves, seeking satisfaction from without ratherthan from within, they become infinitely boresome to themselves, so thatthey can scarcely bear a moment of their own society. 

But if once a man have a taste of true and happy retirement, though itbe but a short hour, or day, now and then, he has found, or is beginningto find, a sure place of refuge, of blessed renewal, toward which in thebusiest hours he will find his thoughts wistfully stealing. How stoutlywill he meet the buffets of the world if he knows he has such a place ofretirement where all is well-ordered and full of beauty, and rightcounsels prevail, and true things are noted. 

As a man grows older, if he cultivate the art of retirement, not indeedas an end in itself, but as a means of developing a richer and freerlife, he will find his reward growing surer and greater until in timenone of the storms or shocks of life any longer disturbs him. He mightin time even reach the height attained by Diogenes, of whom Epictetussaid, "It was not possible for any man to approach him, nor had any manthe means of laying hold upon him to enslave him. He had everythingeasily loosed, everything only hanging to him. If you laid hold of hisproperty, he would rather have let it go and be yours than he would havefollowed you for it; if you laid hold of his leg he would have let gohis leg: if all of his body, all his poor body; his intimates, friends, country, just the same. For he knew from whence he had them, and fromwhom and on what conditions. "

The best partners of solitude are books. I like to take a book with mein my pocket, although I find the world so full of interestingthings--sights, sounds, odours--that often I never read a word in it. Itis like having a valued friend with you, though you walk for mileswithout saying a word to him or he to you: but if you really know yourfriend, it is a curious thing how, subconsciously, you are aware ofwhat he is thinking and feeling about this hillside or that distantview. And so it is with books. It is enough to have this writer in yourpocket, for the very thought of him and what he would say to these oldfields and pleasant trees is ever freshly delightful. And he neverinterrupts at inconvenient moments, nor intrudes his thoughts upon yoursunless you desire it. 

I do not want long books and least of all story books in thewoods--these are for the library--but rather scraps and extracts andcondensations from which thoughts can be plucked like flowers andcarried for a while in the buttonhole. So it is that I am fond of allkinds of anthologies. I have one entitled "Traveller's Joy, " another, "Songs of Nature, " and I have lately found the best one I know called"The Spirit of Man" by Robert Bridges, the English laureate. Otherlittle books that fit well in the pocket on a tramp, because they aretruly companionable, are Ben Jonson's "Timber, " one of the very best, and William Penn's "Fruits of Solitude. " An anthology of Elizabethanverse, given me by a friend, is also a good companion. 

It is not a discourse or a narrative we want as we walk abroad, butconversation. Neither do we want people or facts or stories, but aperson. So I open one of these little books and read therein thethoughtful remark of a wise companion. This I may reply to, or merelyenjoy, as I please. I am in no hurry, as I might be with a livingcompanion, for my book friend, being long dead, is not impatient andgives me time to reply, and is not resentful if I make no reply at all. Submitted to such a test as this few writers, old or new, give continuedprofit or delight. To be considered in the presence of the great andsimple things of nature, or worn long in the warm places of the spirit, a writer must have supreme qualities of sense or humour, a greatsensitiveness to beauty, or a genuine love of goodness--but above all hemust somehow give us the flavour of personality. He must be a truecompanion of the spirit. 

 * * * * *

There is an exercise given to young soldiers which consists in raisingthe hands slowly above the head, taking in a full breath at the sametime, and then letting them down in such a way as to square theshoulders. This leaves the body erect, the head high, the eyes straightahead, the lungs full of good air. It is the attitude that every man atarms should wish to take, After a day in the woods I feel some sucherectness of spirit, a life of the head, and a clearer and calmervision, for I have raised up my hands to the heavens, and drawn in theodours and sights and sounds of the good earth. 

 * * * * *

One of the great joys of such times of retirement perhaps the greatestof the joys is the return, freshened and sweetened, to the common life. How good then appear the things of the garden and farm, the house andshop, that weariness had staled; how good the faces of friends. 

CHAPTER VI

+NO TRESPASS+

I live in a country of beautiful hills, and in the last few years, sinceI have been here with Harriet, I have made familiar and pleasantacquaintance with several of them. .. . 

One hill I know is precious to me for a peculiar reason. Upon the sideof it, along the town road, are two or three old farms with lilacs liketrees about their doorways, and ancient apple orchards with great gnarlybranches, and one has an old garden of hollyhocks, larkspurs, zinnias, mignonette, and I know not how many other old-fashioned flowers. Wildgrapes there are along the neglected walls, and in a corner of one ofthem, by a brook, a mass of sweet currant which in blossom time makesall that bit of valley a bower of fragrance, I have gone that way oftenin spring for the sheer joy of the friendly odours I had across theancient stone fences. 

The largest and stoniest of the farms is owned by an old man namedHowieson. A strange, brown-clad, crooked, crabbed old man, I have seenhim often creeping across his fields with his horses. An ineffectiveworker all his life long, he has scarcely made a living from his stonyacres. His farm is tipped up behind upon the hill and runs below to thebrook, and the buildings are old and worn, and a rocky road goes by tothe town. Once, in more prosperous days, before the factories took overthe winter work of these hill farms, the busy families finished shoes, and wove cloth, and plaited straw hats--and one I know was famous forwooden bowls craftily hollowed out of maple knots--and the hill peoplerelied upon their stony fields for little more than their food. But inthese later days, the farm industries are gone, the houses are no longeroverflowing with children, for there is nothing for children to do, andthose who remain are old or discouraged. Some homes have entirelydisappeared, so that all that remains is a clump of lilacs or a wildtangle of rose bushes about a grass-covered or bush-grown cellar wall. The last thing to disappear is not that which the old farmers most settheir hearts upon, their fine houses and barns or their cultivatedfields, but the one touch of beauty they left--lilac clump orrose-tangle. 

Old Howieson, with that passion for the sense of possession whichthrives best when the realities of possession are slipping away, hasposted all his fields with warnings against intrusion. You may not enterthis old field, nor walk by this brook, nor climb this hill, for allthis belongs, in fee simple, to James Howieson!

[Illustration: NO TRESPASS +JAMES HOWIESON+]

For a long time I did not meet James Howieson face to face, though I hadoften seen his signs, and always with a curious sense of the futility ofthem. I did not need to enter his fields, nor climb his hill, nor walkby his brook, but as the springs passed and the autumns whitened intowinter, I came into more and more complete possession of all thosefields that he so jealously posted. I looked with strange joy upon hishill, saw April blossom in his orchard, and May colour the wild grapeleaves along his walls. June I smelled in the sweet vernal of his hayfields, and from the October of his maples and beeches I gathered richcrops and put up no hostile signs of ownership, paid no taxes, worriedover no mortgage, and often marvelled that he should be so poor withinhis posted domain and I so rich without. 

One who loves a hill, or a bit of valley, will experiment long until hefinds the best spot to take his joy of it; and this is no more than thefarmer himself does when he experiments year after year to find the bestacres for his potatoes, his corn, his oats, his hay. Intensivecultivation is as important in these wider fields of the spirit as inany other. If I consider the things that I hear and see and smell, andthe thoughts that go with them or grow out of them, as really valuablepossessions, contributing to the wealth of life, I cannot see why Ishould not willingly give to them a tenth or a hundredth part of theenergy and thought I give to my potatoes or my blackberries or to thewriting I do. 

I chose a place in a field just below Old Howieson's farm, where thereis a thorn-apple tree to sit or lie under. From the thorn-apple tree, byturning my head in one direction, I can look up at the crown of the hillwith its green hood of oaks and maples and chestnuts, and high above itI can see the clouds floating in the deep sky, or, if I turn my head theother way, for I am a kind of monarch there on the hill and command theworld to delight me, I can look off across the pleasant valley with itsspreading fields and farmsteads set about with trees, and the townslumbering by the riverside. I come often with a little book in onepocket to read from, and a little book in the other to write in, but Irarely use either the one or the other, for there is far too much to seeand think about. 

From this spot I make excursions round about, and have had many strangeand interesting adventures: and now find thoughts of mine, like lichens, upon all the boulders and old walls and oak trees of that hillside. Sometimes I climb to the top of the hill. If I am in a leisurely mood Iwalk lawfully around Old Howieson's farm by a kind of wood lane thatleads to the summit, but often I cross his walls, all regardless of histrespass signs, and go that way to the top. 

[Illustration: It was on one of these lawless excursions in OldHowieson's field that I first saw that strange old fellow]

It was on one of these lawless excursions in Old Howieson's field that Ifirst saw that strange old fellow who is known hereabout as the Herbman. I came upon him so suddenly that I stopped short, curiously startled, asone is startled at finding anything human that seems less than human. Hewas kneeling there among the low verdure of a shallow valley, and lookedlike an old gray rock or some prehistoric animal. I stopped to look athim, but he paid no heed, and seemed only to shrink into himself asthough, if he kept silent, he might be taken for stock or stone. Iaddressed him but he made no answer. I went nearer, with a sensation ofuncanny wonder; but he did not so much as glance up at me, though heknew I was there. His old brown basket was near him and the cane besideit. He was gathering pennyroyal. 

"Another man who is taking an unexpected crop from Old Howieson'sacres, " I thought to myself. 

I watched him for some moments, quite still, as one might watch a turtleor a woodchuck--and left him there. 

Since then I have heard something about him, and seen him once ortwice. A strange old man, a wanderer upon the face of the fragrantearth. Spring and summer he wears always an old overcoat, and carries abasket with double covers, very much worn and brown with usage. His caneis of hickory with a crooked root for a handle, this also shiny withage. He gathers bitter-bark, tansy; ginseng, calamus, smartweed, andslippery elm, and from along old fences and barnyards, catnip andboneset, I suppose he lives somewhere, a hole in a log, or the limb of atree, but no one knows where it is, or how he dries or cures hisfindings. No one knows his name: perhaps he has forgotten it himself. Aname is no great matter anyway. He is called simply the Herbman. Hedrifts into our valley in the spring, is seen here and there on thehills or in the fields, like the crows or the blackbirds, and disappearsin the fall with the robins and the maple leaves. Perhaps he is one ofthose favoured souls to whom life is all spring and summer. 

The age has passed him by, and except for certain furtive old women, fewcare now for his sovereign remedies. 

I met him once in the town road, and he stopped humbly without liftinghis eyes, and opening his basket let out into the air such a fragranceof ancient simples as I never smelled before. He said nothing at all;but took out dry bundles of catnip, sassafras, slippery elm, to show me. He had also pennyroyal for healing teas, and calamus and bitter-bark formiseries. I selected a choice assortment of his wares to take home toHarriet, but could get him to name no price. He took what I gave withoutobjection and without thanks, and went his way. A true man of the hills. 

As I said, I came often to the field below Old Howieson's farm. I thinkthe old man saw me coming and going, for the road winds along the sideof the hill within sight of his house, skirts a bit of wood, and with anunexpected turn comes out triumphantly to the top of the ridge beyond. 

At the turn of the road I always disappeared, for I crossed the wallinto the field below Old Howieson's farm, and mysteriously failed toappear to the watchful eye upon the ridge beyond. What could be moreprovoking or suspicious! To go in at one end of a well-travelled roadand not to come out in the regular and expected way at the other! Or tobe suspected of not being deferential toward trespass signs, orobservant of closed ways! How disturbing to all those who dwelltremulously within posted enclosures of whatever sort, or those who basetheir sense of possession upon stumped paper, or take their God from abook. Men have been crucified for less. 

Sooner or later those who cross boundaries clash with those who defendboundaries: and those who adventure offend those who seek security; butit was a long time before I came face to face with Old Man Howieson. 

This was the way of it: Well back of Howieson's buildings and reachingupward upon the face of the hill stretches a long and narrow field, akind of barren back pasture with boulders in it, and gnarly hawthorntrees, and a stunted wild apple or so. A stone fence runs down one sideof the cleared land and above it rises the hill. It is like a greattrough or ravine which upon still spring evenings gathers in all thevaried odours of Old Howieson's farm and orchard and brings them down tome as I sit in the field below. I need no book then, nor sight of thedistant town, nor song of birds, for I have a singular and incomparablealbum of the good odours of the hill. This is one reason why I chosethis particular spot in the fields for my own, and it has given me asecret name for the place which I will not here disclose. If ever youshould come this way in May, my friend, I might take you there of anevening, but could warrant you no joy of it that you yourself could nottake. But you need not come here, or go there, but stop where you are atthis moment, and I here assure you that if you look up, and look in, you, also, will see something of the glory of the world. 

One evening I had been upon the hill to seek again the pattern anddimensions of my tabernacle, and to receive anew the tables of the Jaw. I had crossed Old Howieson's field so often that I had almost forgottenit was not my own. It was indeed mine by the same inalienable right thatit belonged to the crows that flew across it, or to the partridges thatnested in its coverts, or the woodchucks that lived in its walls, or thesquirrels in its chestnut trees. It was mine by the final test of allpossession--that I could use it. 

He came out of a thicket of hemlocks like a wraith of the past, a grayand crabbed figure, and confronted me there in the wide field. Isuppose he thought he had caught me at last. I was not at all startledor even surprised, for as I look back upon it now I know that I hadalways been expecting him. Indeed, I felt a lift of the spirit, the kindof jauntiness with which one meets a crucial adventure. 

He stood there for a moment quite silent, a grim figure of denial, and Ifacing him. 

"You are on my land, sir, " he said. 

I answered him instantly and in a way wholly unexpected to myself:

"You are breathing my air, sir. "

He looked at me dully, but with a curious glint of fear in his eye, fearand anger, too. 

"Did you see the sign down there? This land is posted. "

"Yes, " I said, "I have seen your signs. But let me ask you: If I werenot here would you own this land any more than you do now? Would ityield you any better crops?"

It is never the way of those who live in posted enclosures, of whateversort, to reason. They assert. 

"This land is posted, " said the old man doggedly. 

"Are you sure you own it?" I asked. "Is it really yours?"

"My father owned this farm before me, " he said, "and my grandfathercleared this field and built these walls. I was born in that house andhave lived there all my life. "

"Well, then, I must be going--and I will not come here again, " I said. "I am sorry I walked on your land--"

I started to go down the hill, but stopped, and said, as though it werean afterthought:

"I have made some wonderful discoveries upon your land, and that hillthere. You don't seem to know how valuable this field is. .. . Good-bye. "

With that I took two or three steps down the hill--but felt the oldman's hand on my arm. 

"Say, mister, " he asked, "are you one of the electric company men? Isthat high-tension line comin' across here?"

"No, " I said, "it is something more valuable than that!"

I walked onward a few steps, as though I was quite determined to get outof his field, but he followed close behind me. 

"It ain't the new trolley line, is it?"

"No, " I said, "it isn't the trolley line. "

"What is it, then?"

In that question, eager and shrill, spoke the dry soul of the old man, the lifelong hope that his clinging ownership of those barren acreswould bring him from the outside some miraculous profit. 

His whole bearing had changed. He had ceased to be truculent or evenfearful, but was now shrilly beseeching, A great wave of compassion cameover me, I was sorry for him, imprisoned there within the walls of hisown making, and expecting wealth from the outside when there was wealthin plenty within and everywhere about him. 

But how could I help him? You can give no valuable thing to any man whohas not the vision to take it. If I had told him what I found upon hishill or in his fields he would have thought me--well, crazy; or he wouldhave suspected that under cover of such a quest I hid some evil design. As well talk adventure to an old party man, or growth to a setchurchman. 

So I left him there within his walls. So often when we think we arebarring other people out, we are only barring ourselves in. The last Isaw of him as I turned into the road was a gray and crabbed figurestanding alone, looking after me, and not far off his own sign:

[Illustration: NO TRESPASS JAMES HOWIESON]

Sometime, I thought, this old farm will be owned by a man who is alsocapable of possessing it. More than one such place I know already hasbeen taken by those who value the beauty of the hills and the old walls, and the boulder-strewn fields. One I know is really possessed by a manwho long ago had a vision of sheep feeding on fields too infertile toproduce profitable crops, and many others have been taken by men who sawforests growing where forests ought to grow. For real possession is nota thing of inheritance or of documents, but of the spirit; and passes byvision and imagination. Sometimes, indeed, the trespass signs standlong--so long that we grow impatient--but nature is in no hurry. Naturewaits, and presently the trespass signs rot away, one arm falls off, andlo! where the adventurer found only denial before he is now invitedto--"pass. " The old walls are conquered by the wild cherries and purpleivy and blackberry bushes, and the old Howiesons sleep in calmforgetfulness of their rights upon the hills they thought theypossessed, and all that is left is a touch of beauty--lilac clump andwild-rose tangle. 

CHAPTER VII

LOOK AT THE WORLD!

"Give me to struggle with weather and wind; Give me to stride through the snow;Give me the feel of the chill on my cheeks, And the glow and the glory within!"

_March 17th. _

The joy of winter: the downright joy of winter! I tramped to-day throughmiles of open, snow-clad country. I slipped in the ruts of the roads orploughed through the drifts in the fields with such a sense of adventureas I cannot describe. 

Day before yesterday we had a heavy north wind with stinging gusts ofsnow. Yesterday fell bright and cold with snow lying fine and crumblylike sugar. To the east of the house where I shovelled a path the heapsare nearly as high as my shoulder. .. . 

This perfect morning a faint purplish haze is upon all the hills, withbright sunshine and still, cold air through which the chimney smokerises straight upward. Hungry crows flap across the fields, or withunaccustomed daring settle close in upon the manure heaps around thebarns. All the hillsides glisten and sparkle like cloth of gold, eachglass knob on the telephone poles is like a resplendent jewel, and thelong morning shadows of the trees lie blue upon the snow. Horses' feetcrunch upon the road as the early farmers go by with milk for thecreamery--the frosty breath of each driver fluttering aside like a whitescarf. Through the still air ordinary voices cut sharply and clearly, and a laugh bounds out across the open country with a kind ofsuperabundance of joy. I see two men beating their arms as they followtheir wood sled. They are bantering one another noisily. I see a manshovelling snow from his barn doors; as each shovelful rises andscatters, the sun catches it for an instant and it falls, a silveryshower. . .. I tramped to-day through miles of it: and whether in brokenroads or spotless fields, had great joy of it. It was good to stridethrough opposing drifts and to catch the tingling air upon one's face. The spring is beautiful indeed, and one is happy at autumn, but of allthe year no other mornings set the blood to racing like these; nonegives a greater sense of youth, strength, or of the general goodness ofthe earth. 

Give me the winter: give me the winter! Not all winter, but just winterenough, just what nature sends. 

. .. Dry air in the throat so cold at first as to make one cough; anddry, sharp, tingling air in the nostrils; frost on beard and eyebrows;cheeks red and crusty, so that to wrinkle them hurts: but all the bodywithin aglow with warmth and health. Twice the ordinary ozone in theair, so that one wishes to whistle or sing, and if the fingers growchill, what are shoulders for but to beat them around!

 * * * * *

It is a strange and yet familiar experience how all things present theiropposites. Do you enjoy the winter? Your neighbour loathes or fears it. Do you enjoy life? To your friend it is a sorrow and a heaviness. Evento you it is not always alike. Though the world itself is the sameto-day as it was yesterday and will be to-morrow--the same snowy fieldsand polar hills, the same wintry stars, the same infinitely alluringvariety of people--yet to-day you, that were a god, have become agrieving child. 

Even at moments when we are well pleased with the earth we often have awistful feeling that we should conceal it lest it hurt those borne downby circumstances too great or too sad for them. What is there to offerone who cannot respond gladly to the beauty of the fields, or opens hisheart widely to the beckoning of friends? And we ask ourselves: Have Ibeen tried as this man has? Would I be happy then? Have I been wrungwith sorrow, worn down by ill-health, buffeted with injustice as thisman has? Would I be happy then?

I saw on my walk to-day an old woman with a crossed shawl upon herbreast creeping out painfully to feed her hens. She lives on a small, ill-kept farm I have known for years. She is old and poor and asthmatic, and the cold bites through her with the sharpness of knives. The path tothe hen-house is a kind of via dolorosa, a terror of slipperiness andcold. She might avoid it: her son, worthless as he is, might do it forher, but she clings to it as she clings to her life. It is the lastreason for staying here! But the white fields and drifted roads arenever joyfully met, never desired. She spends half the summer dreadingthe return of winter from the severities of which she cannot escape. 

Nor is it all mere poverty, though she is poor, for there are those whowould help to send her away, but she will not go. She is wrapped aboutwith Old Terrors, Ancient Tyrannies--that Terror of the Unknown which ismore painful even than the Terror of the Known: those Tyrannies of Habitand of Place which so often and so ruthlessly rule the lives of the old. She clings desperately to the few people she knows ("'tis hard to dieamong strangers!") and the customs she has followed all her life. Against the stark power of her tragic helplessness neither the good northe great of the earth may prevail. This reality too. .. . 

I had a curious experience not long ago: One of those experiences whichlight up as in a flash some of the fundamental things of life. I met aman in the town road whom I have come to know rather more than slightly. He is a man of education and has been "well-off" in the country sense, is still, so far as I know, but he has a sardonic outlook upon life. Heis discouraged about human nature. Thinks that politics are rotten, andthat the prices of potatoes and bread are disgraceful. The state of thenation, and of the world, is quite beyond temperate expression. Few raysof joy seem to illuminate his pathway. 

As we approached in the town road I called out to him:

"Good morning. "

He paused and, to my surprise, responded:

"Are you happy?"

It had not occurred to me for some time whether I was happy or not, so Ireplied:

"I don't know; why do you ask?"

He looked at me in a questioning, and I thought rather indignant, way. 

"Why shouldn't a man be happy?" I pressed him. 

"Why _should_ he be? Answer me that!" he responded, "Why should he be?Look at the world!"

With that he passed onward with a kind of crushing dignity. 

I have laughed since when I have recalled the tone of his voice as hesaid, "Look at the world!" Gloomy and black it was. It evidently madehim indignant to be here. 

But at the moment his bitter query, the essential attitude of spiritwhich lay behind it, struck into me with a poignancy that stopped mewhere I stood. Was I, then, all wrong about the world? I actually had akind of fear lest when I should look up again I should find the earthgrown wan and bleak and unfriendly, so that I should no longer desireit. 

"Look at the world!" I said aloud. 

And with that I suddenly looked all around me and it is a strange, deepthing, as I have thought of it since, how the world came back upon mewith a kind of infinite, calm assurance, as beautiful as ever it was. There were the hills and the fields and the great still trees--and theopen sky above. And even as I looked down the road and saw my sardonicold friend plodding through the snow--his very back frowning--I had asense that he belonged in the picture, too--and couldn't help himself. That he even had a kind of grace, and gave a human touch to that wintryscene! He had probably said a great deal more than he meant!

_Look at the world_!

Well, look at it. 

CHAPTER VIII

A GOOD APPLE

"I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptiblegoods. "

I have just had one of the pleasant experiences of life. From time totime, these brisk winter days, I like to walk across the fields toHorace's farm. I take a new way each time and make nothing of the snowin the fields or the drifts along the fences. .. . 

"Why, " asks Harriet, "do you insist on struggling through the snow whenthere's a good beaten road around?"

"Harriet, " I said, "why should any one take a beaten road when thereare new and adventurous ways to travel?"

When I cross the fields I never know at what moment I may come upon somestrange or surprising experience, what new sights I may see, what newsounds I may hear, and I have the further great advantage of appearingunexpectedly at Horace's farm. Sometimes I enter by the cow lane, sometimes by way of the old road through the wood-lot, or I appearcasually, like a gust of wind, around the corner of the barn, or I letHorace discover me leaning with folded arms upon his cattle fence. Ihave come to love doing this, for unexpectedness in visitors, as inreligion and politics, is disturbing to Horace and, as sand-grits inoysters produce pearls, my unexpected appearances have more than onceastonished new thoughts in Horace, or yielded pearly bits of nativehumour. 

Ever since I have known him, Horace has been rather high-and-mighty withme; but I know he enjoys my visits, for I give him always, I think, apleasantly renewed sense of his own superiority. When he sees me his eyelights up with the comfortable knowledge that he can plough so muchbetter than I can, that his corn grows taller than mine, and his henslay more eggs. He is a wonderfully practical man, is Horace;hard-headed, they call it here. And he never feels so superior, I think, as when he finds me sometimes of a Sunday or an evening walking acrossthe fields where my land joins his, or sitting on a stone fence, orlying on my back in the pasture under a certain friendly thorn-appletree. This he finds it difficult to understand, and thinks it highlyundisciplined, impractical, no doubt reprehensible. 

One incident of the sort I shall never forget. It was on a June day onlya year or so after I came here, and before Horace knew me as well as hedoes now. I had climbed the hill to look off across his own high-fieldpasture, where the white daisies, the purple fleabane, and thebuttercups made a wild tangle of beauty among the tall herd's grass. Light airs moved billowing across the field, bobolinks and meadow larkswere singing, and all about were the old fences, each with its wildhedgerow of choke cherry, young elms, and black raspberry bushes, andbeyond, across miles and miles of sunny green countryside, themysterious blue of the ever-changing hills. It was a spot I loved then, and have loved more deeply every year since. 

Horace found me sitting on the stone fence which there divides ourpossessions; I think he had been observing me with amusement for sometime before I saw him, for when I looked around his face wore acomfortably superior, half-disdainful smile. 

"David, " said he, "what ye doin' here?"

"Harvesting my crops, " I said. 

He looked at me sharply to see if I was joking, but I was perfectlysober. 

"Harvestin' yer crops?"

"Yes, " I said, the fancy growing suddenly upon me, "and just now I'vebeen taking a crop from the field you think you own. "

I waved my hand to indicate his high-field pasture. 

"Don't I own it?"

"No, Horace, I'm sorry to say, not all of it. To be frank with you, since I came here, I've quietly acquired an undivided interest in thatland. I may as well tell you first as last. I'm like you, Horace, I'mreaching out in all directions. "

I spoke in as serious a voice as I could command: the tone I use when Isell potatoes. Horace's smile wholly disappeared. A city feller like mewas capable of anything!

"How's that?" he exclaimed sharply. "What do you mean? That field camedown to me from my grandfather Jamieson. "

I continued to look at Horace with great calmness and gravity. 

"Judging from what I now know of your title, Horace, " said I, "neitheryour grandfather Jamieson nor your father ever owned all of that field. And I've now acquired that part of it, in fee simple, that neither theynor you ever really had. "

At this Horace began to look seriously worried. The idea that any onecould get away from him anything that he possessed, especially withouthis knowledge, was terrible to him. 

"What do you mean, Mr. Grayson?"

He had been calling me "David, " but he now returned sharply to "Mister. "In our country when we "Mister" a friend something serious is about tohappen. It's the signal for general mobilization. 

I continued to look Horace rather coldly and severely in the eye. 

"Yes, " said I, "I've acquired a share in that field which I shall notsoon surrender. "

An unmistakable dogged look came into Horace's face, the look inheritedfrom generations of land-owning, home-defending, fighting ancestors. Horace is New England of New England. 

"Yes, " I said, "I have already had two or three crops from that field. "

"Huh!" said Horace. "I've cut the grass and I've cut the rowen everyyear since you bin here. What's more, I've got the money fer it in thebank. "

He tapped his fingers on the top of the wall. 

"Nevertheless, Horace, " said I, "I've got my crops, also, from thatfield, and a steady income, too. "

"What crops?"

"Well, Eve just now been gathering in one of them. What do you think ofthe value of the fleabane, and the daisies, and the yellow five-fingerin that field?"

"Huh!" said Horace. 

"Well, I've just been cropping them. And have you observed the wind inthe grass--and those shadows along the southern wall? Aren't theyvaluable?"

"Huh!" said Horace. 

"I've rarely seen anything more beautiful, " I said, "than this fieldand the view across it--I'm taking that crop now, and later I shallgather in the rowen of goldenrod and aster, and the red and yellow ofthe maple trees--and store it all away in _my_ bank--to live on nextwinter. "

It was some time before either of us spoke again, but I could see fromthe corner of my eye that mighty things were going on inside of Horace;and suddenly he broke out into a big laugh and clapped his knee with hishand in a way he has. 

"Is that all!" said Horace. 

I think it only confirmed him in the light esteem in which he held me. Though I showed him unmeasured wealth in his own fields, ungatheredcrops of new enjoyment, he was unwilling to take them, but was contentwith hay. It is a strange thing to me, and a sad one, how many of ourfarmers (and be it said in a whisper, other people, too) own their landswithout ever really possessing them: and let the most precious crops ofthe good earth go to waste. 

After that, for a long time, Horace loved to joke me about my crops andhis. A joke with Horace is a durable possession. 

"S'pose you think that's your field, " he'd say. 

"The best part of it, " I'd return, "but you can have all I've taken, andthere'll still be enough for both of us. "

"You're a queer one!" he'd say, and then add sometimes, dryly, "butthere's one crop ye don't git, David, " and he'd tap his pocket where hecarries his fat, worn, leather pocket-book. "And as fer feelin's, itcan't be beat. "

So many people have the curious idea that the only thing the worlddesires enough to pay its hard money for is that which can be seen oreaten or worn. But there never was a greater mistake. While men willhaggle to the penny over the price of hay, or fight for a cent more tothe bushel of oats, they will turn out their very pockets for strange, intangible joys, hopes, thoughts, or for a moment of peace in a feverishworld the unknown great possessions. 

So it was that one day, some months afterward, when we had been thusbantering each other with great good humour, I said to him:

"Horace, how much did you get for your hay this year?"

"Off that one little piece, " he replied, "I figger fifty-two dollars. "

"Well, Horace, " said I, "I have beaten you. I got more out of it thisyear than you did. "

"Oh, I know what you mean----"

"No, Horace, you don't. This time I mean just what you do: money, cash, dollars. "

"How's that, now?"

"Well, I wrote a little piece about your field, and the wind in thegrass, and the hedges along the fences, and the weeds among the timothy, and the fragrance of it all in June and sold it last week----" I leanedover toward Horace and whispered behind my hand--in just the way hetells me the price he gets for his pigs. 

"What!" he exclaimed. 

Horace had long known that I was "a kind of literary feller, " but hisface was now a study in astonishment. 

"_What?_"

Horace scratched his head, as he is accustomed to do when puzzled, withone finger just under the rim of his hat. 

"Well, I vum!" said he. 

Here I have been wandering all around Horace's barn--in thesnow--getting at the story I really started to tell, which probablysupports Horace's conviction that I am an impractical and unsubstantialperson. If I had the true business spirit I should have gone by thebeaten road from my house to Horace's, borrowed the singletree I wentfor, and hurried straight home. Life is so short when one is afterdollars! I should not have wallowed through the snow, nor stopped at thetop of the hill to look for a moment across the beautiful wintryearth--gray sky and bare wild trees and frosted farmsteads with homelysmoke rising from the chimneys--I should merely have brought home asingletree--and missed the glory of life! As I reflect upon it now, Ibelieve it took me no longer to go by the fields than by the road; andI've got the singletree as securely with me as though I had not lookedupon the beauty of the eternal hills, nor reflected, as I tramped, uponthe strange ways of man. 

Oh, my friend, is it the settled rule of life that we are to acceptnothing not expensive? It is not so settled for me; that which isfreest, cheapest, seems somehow more valuable than anything I pay for;that which is given better than that which is bought; that which passesbetween you and me in the glance of an eye, a touch of the hand, isbetter than minted money!

I found Horace upon the March day I speak of just coming out of his newfruit cellar. Horace is a progressive and energetic man, a leader inthis community, and the first to have a modern fruit cellar. By thismeans he ministers profitably to that appetite of men which craves mostsharply that which is hardest to obtain: he supplies the world withapples in March. 

It being a mild and sunny day, the door of the fruit cellar was open, and as I came around the corner I had such of whiff of fragrance as Icannot describe. It seemed as though the vials of the earth's mostprecious odours had been broken there in Horace's yard! The smell ofripe apples!

In the dusky depths of the cellar, down three steps, I could seeHorace's ruddy face. 

"How are ye, David, " said he. "Will ye have a Good Apple?"

So he gave me a good apple. It was a yellow Bellflower without ablemish, and very large and smooth. The body of it was waxy yellow, buton the side where the sun had touched it, it blushed a delicious deepred. Since October it had been in the dark, cool storage-room, andHorace, like some old monkish connoisseur of wines who knows just whento bring up the bottles of a certain vintage, had chosen the exactmoment in all the year when the vintage of the Bellflower was at itsbest. As he passed it to me I caught, a scent as of old crushed appleblossoms, or fancied I did or it may have been the still finer aroma offriendship which passed at the touching of our fingers. 

It was a hand-filling apple and likewise good for tired eyes, anantidote for winter, a remedy for sick souls. 

"A wonderful apple!" I said to Horace, holding it off at arm's length. 

"No better grown anywhere, " said he, with scarcely restrained pride. 

I took my delight of it more nearly; and the odour was like new-cutclover in an old orchard, or strawberry leaves freshly trod upon, or thesmell of peach wood at the summer pruning--how shall one describe it? atleast a compound or essence of all the good odours of summer. 

"Shall I eat it?" I asked myself, for I thought such a perfection ofnature should be preserved for the blessing of mankind. As I hesitated, Horace remarked:

"It was grown to be eaten. "

So I bit into it, a big liberal mouthful, which came away with a rendingsound such as one hears sometimes in a winter's ice-pond. The fleshwithin, all dewy with moisture, was like new cream, except a rim nearthe surface where the skin had been broken; here it was of a clear, deepyellow. 

New odours came forth and I knew for the first time how perfect indeliciousness such an apple could be. A mild, serene, ripe, richbouquet, compounded essence of the sunshine from these old Massachusettshills, of moisture drawn from our grudging soil, of all the peculiarvirtues of a land where the summers make up in the passion of growth forthe long violence of winter; the compensatory aroma of a lifetriumphant, though hedged about by severity, was in the bouquet of thisperfect Bellflower. 

Like some of the finest of wines and the warmest of friends it was oftwo flavours, and was not to be eaten for mere nourishment, but was tobe tasted and enjoyed. The first of the flavours came readily in asweetness, richness, a slight acidity, that it might not cloy; but thedeeper, more delicate flavour came later--if one were not crudelyimpatient--and was, indeed, the very soul of the fruit. One does notquickly arrive at souls either in apples or in friends. And I said toHorace with solemnity, for this was an occasion not to be lightlytreated:

"I have never in my life tasted a fine apple. "

"There is no finer apple, " said Horace with conviction. 

With that we fell to discussing the kinds and qualities of all theapples grown this side China, and gave our more or less slightingopinions of Ben Davises and Greenings and Russets, and especially oftrivial summer apples of all sorts, and came to the conclusion at lastthat it must have been just after God created this particular "treeyielding fruit" that he desisted from his day's work and remarked thatwhat he saw was good. The record is silent upon the point, and Moses isnot given to adjectives, but I have often wondered what He would havesaid if He had not only seen the product of His creation, but _tasted_it. 

I forgot to say that when I would have slurred the excellence of theBaldwin in comparison with the Bellflower, Horace began at once tointerpose objections, and defended the excellence and perfection of thatvariety. 

. .. He has fifty barrels of Baldwins in his cellar. 

While we talked with much enjoyment of the lore of apples andapple-growing, I finished the Bellflower to the very core, and said toHorace as I reluctantly tossed aside the stem and three seeds:

"Surely this has been one of the rare moments of life. "

CHAPTER IX

I GO TO THE CITY. 

"Surely man is a wonderfull, vaine, divers and wavering subject:It is very hard to * ground and directly constant and uniformejudgement upon him. "

Though I live most of the time in the country, as I love best to do, sometimes I go to the city and find there much that is strange andamusing. I like to watch the inward flow of the human tide in themorning, and the ebb at evening, and sometimes in the slack tide of noonI drift in one of the eddies where the restless life of the city pausesa moment to refresh itself. One of the eddies I like best of all is nearthe corner of Madison Square, where the flood of Twenty-third Streetswirls around the bulkhead of the Metropolitan tower to meet thetransverse currents of Madison Avenue. Here, of a bright morning whenDown-at-Heels is generously warming himself on the park benches, and OldDefeat watches Young Hurry striding by, one has a royal choice ofrefreshment: a "red-hot" enfolded in a bun from the dingy sausage wagonat the curb, or a plum for a penny from the Italian with the trundlecart, or news of the world in lurid gulps from the noon edition of thepaper--or else a curious idea or so flung out stridently over the headsof the crowd by a man on a soap box. 

I love this corner of the great city; I love the sense of the warm humantide flowing all about me. I love to look into the strange, dark, eager, sensitive, blunt faces. 

The other noon, drifting there in that human eddy, I stopped to listento a small, shabby man who stood in transitory eminence upon his soapbox, half his body reaching above the knobby black soil of human headsaround him--black, knobby soil that he was seeking, there in the springsunshine, to plough with strange ideas. He had ruddy cheeks and a tuftof curly hair set like an upholstery button on each side of his baldhead. The front teeth in his upper jaw were missing, and as he openedhis mouth one could see the ample lining of red flannel. 

He raised his voice penetratingly to overcome the noise of the world, straining until the dark-corded veins of his throat stood out sharplyand perspiration gleamed on his bald forehead. As though his lifedepended upon the delivery of his great message he was explaining tothat close-packed crowd that there was no God. 

From time to time he offered for sale pamphlets by R. G. Ingersoll andFrederic Harrison, with grimy back numbers of a journal called the"Truth-Seeker. "

By the slant and timbre of his speech he was an Englishman; he had agift of vigorous statement, and met questioners like an intellectualpugilist with skilful blows between the eyes: and his grammar was bad. 

I stood for some time listening to him while he proved with excellentlogic, basing his reasoning on many learned authorities, that there wasno God. His audience cheered with glee his clever hits, and held uptheir hands for the books he had for sale. 

"Who is this speaker?" I asked the elbowing helper who came through thecrowd to deliver the speaker's wares and collect the silver for them. "Who is this speaker who says there is no God?"

"Henry Moore, " he responded. 

"And who, " I asked, "is Henry Moore?"

"He is an Englishman and was brought up a Presbyterian--but he seen thelight. "

"And no longer thinks there is any God?"

"Nope. "

"And these books prove the same thing?"

"Yep. "

So I bought one of them, thinking it wonderful that proof of somomentous a conclusion could be had for so small a sum. 

This Henry Moore could fling arguments like thunderbolts; he couldmarshall his authorities like an army; he could talk against the roar ofthe city and keep his restless audience about him; and if he did notbelieve in God he had complete faith in Haeckel and Jacques Loeb, andtook at face value the lightest utterances of John Stuart Mill. 

I enjoyed listening to Henry Moore. I enjoyed looking into the faces allaround me--mostly keen foreign or half-foreign faces, and young faces, and idle faces, and curious faces, and faces that drank in, and facesthat disdainfully rejected. 

After a time, however, I grew unaccountably weary of the vehemence ofHenry Moore and of the adroit helper who hawked his books. And suddenlyI looked up into the clear noon blue of the ancient sky. A pigeon wasflying across the wide open spaces of the square, the sunlight glintingon its wings. I saw the quiet green tops of the trees in the park, andthe statue of Roscoe Conkling, turning a nonchalant shoulder toward theheated speaker who said there was no God. How many strange ideas, contradictory arguments, curious logic, have fallen, this last quartercentury, upon the stony ears of Roscoe Conkling! Far above me theMetropolitan tower, that wonder work of men, lifted itself grandly tothe heavens, and all about I suddenly heard and felt the roar and surgeof the mighty city, the mighty, careless, busy city, thousands of peoplestirring about me, souls full of hot hopes and mad desires, unsatisfiedlongings, unrealized ideals. And I stepped out of the group who weregathered around the man who said there was no God. .. . 

But I still drifted in the eddy, thinking how wonderful and strange allthese things were, and came thus to another group, close gathered atthe curb. It was much smaller than the other, and at the centre stood apatriarchal man with a white beard, and with him two women. He wasleaning against the iron railing of the park, and several of thefree-thinker's audience, freshly stuffed with arguments, had engaged himhotly. Just as I approached he drew from his pocket a worn, leather-covered Bible, and said, tapping it with one finger:

"For forty years I have carried this book with me. It contains morewisdom than any other book in the world. Your friend there can talkuntil he is hoarse--it will do no harm--but the world will continue tofollow the wisdom of this book. "

A kind of exaltation gleamed in his eye, and he spoke with anearnestness equal to that of Henry Moore. He, too, was a street speaker, waiting with his box at his side to begin. He would soon be standing upthere to prove, also with logic and authority, that there was a God. He, also, would plough that knobby black soil of human heads with the shareof his vehement faith. The two women were with him to sing their belief, and one had a basket to take up a collection, and the other, singlingme out as I listened with eagerness, gave me a printed tract, a kind ofadvertisement of God. 

I looked at the title of it. It was called: "God in His World. "

"Does this prove that God is really in the world?" I asked. 

"Yes, " she said. "Will you read it?"

"Yes, " I said, "I am glad to get it. It is wonderful that so great atruth can he established in so small a pamphlet, and all for nothing. "

She looked at me curiously, I thought, and I put the tract by the sideof the pamphlet I had bought from the freethinker, and drifted again inthe eddy. 

The largest crowd of all was close packed about a swarthy young chapwhose bushy hair waved in response to the violence of his oratory. He, too, was perspiring with his ideas. He had a marvellous staccato methodof question and answer. He would shoot a question like a rifle bullet atthe heads of his audience, and then stiffen back like a wary boxer, bothclenched hands poised in a tremulous gesticulation, and before any onecould answer his bullet-like question, he was answering it himself. As Iedged my way nearer to him I discovered that he, also, had a little pileof books at his feet which a keen-eyed assistant was busily selling. Howwell-established the technic of this art of the city eddies! Howwell-studied the psychology!

I thought this example the most perfect of them all, and watched witheagerness the play of the argument as it was mirrored in the intentfaces all about me. And gradually I grew interested in what the man wassaying, and thought of many good answers I could give to hisquestionings if he were not so cunning with answers of his own. Finally, in the midst of one of his loftiest flights, he demanded, hotly:

"Are you not, every one of you, a slave of the capitalist class?"

It was perfectly still for a second after he spoke, and before I knewwhat I was doing, I responded:

"Why, no, I'm not. "

It seemed to astonish the group around me: white faces turned my way. 

But it would have been difficult to dash that swarthy young man. He wasas full of questions as a porcupine is full of quills. 

"Well, sir, " said he, "if I can prove to you that you are a slave, willyou believe it?"

"No, " I said, "unless you make me feel like a slave, too! No man is aslave who does not feel slavish. "

But I was no match for that astonishing young orator; and he had theadvantage over me of a soap box! Moreover, at that moment, the keen-eyedassistant, never missing an opportunity, offered me one of his littlered books. 

"If you can read this without feeling a slave, " he remarked, "you'reJohn D. Himself in disguise. "

I bought his little red book and put it with the pamphlet of thefreethinker, and the tract of the God-fearing man, and stepped out ofthat group, feeling no more servile than when I went in. And I said tomyself:

"This, surely, is a curious place to be in. "

For I was now strangely interested in these men of the eddy. 

"There are more gods preached here, " I said, "than ever were known onthe Acropolis. "

Up the square a few paces I saw a covered wagon with a dense crowdaround it. And in front of it upon a little platform which raised thespeaker high above the heads of the audience stood a woman, speakingwith shrill ardour. Most of the hearers were men; and she was tellingthem with logic and authority that the progress of civilization waitedupon the votes of women. The army of the world stood still until therear rank of its women could be brought into line! Morals languished, religion faded, industries were brutalized, home life destroyed! If onlywomen had their rights the world would at once become a beautiful andcharming place! Oh, she was a powerful and earnest speaker; she made medesire above everything, at the first opportunity, to use my share ofthe power in this Government to provide each woman with a vote. And justas I had reached this compliant stage there came a girl smiling andpassing her little basket. The sheer art of it! So I dropped in my coinand took the little leaflet she gave me and put it side by side with theother literature of my accumulating library. 

And so I came away from those hot little groups with their perspiringorators, and felt again the charm of the tall buildings and the widesunny square, and the park with Down-at-Heels warming his ragged shanks, and the great city clanging heedlessly by. How serious they all werethere in their eddies! Is there no God? Will woman suffrage or socialismcure all the evils of this mad world which, ill as it is, we would notbe without? Is a belief for forty years in the complete wisdom of theBook the final solution? Why do not all of the seeking and sufferingthousands flowing by in Twenty-third Street stop here in the eddies toseek the solution of their woes, the response to their hot desires?

So I came home to the country, thinking of what I had seen and heard, asking myself, "What is the truth, after all? What _is_ real?"

And I was unaccountably glad to be at home again. As I came down thehill through the town road the valley had a quiet welcome for me, andthe trees I know best, and the pleasant fields of corn and tobacco, andthe meadows ripe with hay. I know of nothing more comforting to thequestioning spirit than the sight of distant hills. .. . 

I found that Bill had begun the hay cutting. I saw him in the lowerfield as I came by in the road. There he was, stationed high on theload, and John, the Pole, was pitching on. When he saw me he lifted onearm high in the air and waved his hand--and I in return gave him thesign of the Free Fields. 

"Harriet, " I said, "it seems to me I was never so glad before to gethome. "

"It's what you always say, " she remarked placidly. 

"This time it's true!" And I put the pamphlets I had accumulated in thecity eddies upon the pile of documents which I fully intend to read butrarely get to. 

The heavenly comfort of an old shirt! The joy of an old hat!

As I walked down quickly into the field with my pitchfork on my shoulderto help Bill with the hay, I was startled to see, hanging upon a peachtree at the corner of the orchard, a complete suit of black clothes. Near it, with the arms waving gently in the breeze, was a white shirtand a black tie, and at the foot of the tree a respectable black hat. Itwas as though the peach tree had suddenly, on that bright day, gone intomourning. 

I laughed to myself. 

"Bill, " I said, "what does this mean?"

Bill is a stout jolly chap with cheeks that look, after half a day'shaying, like raw beef-steaks. He paused on his load, smiling broadly, his straw hat set like a halo on the back of his head. 

"Expected a funeral, " he said cheerfully. 

Bill is the undertaker's assistant, and is always on call in cases ofemergency. 

"What happened, Bill?"

"They thought they'd bury 'im this afternoon, but they took an' kep' 'imover till to-morrow. "

"But you came prepared. "

"Yas, no time to go home in hayin'. The pump fer me, and the blacktogs. "

Bill calls the first rakings of the hay "tumbles, " and the scatteredre-rakings, which he despises, he calls "scratchings. " I took one sideof the load and John, the Pole, the other and we put on great forkfulsfrom the tumbles which Bill placed skilfully at the corners and sides ofthe load, using the scratchings for the centre. 

John, the Pole, watched the load from below. "Tank he too big here, " hewould say, or, "Tank you put more there"; but Bill told mostly by thefeel of the load under his feet or by the "squareness of his eye. "John, the Pole, is a big, powerful fellow, and after smoothing down theload with his fork he does not bother to rake up the combings, butgathering a bunch of loose hay with his fork, he pushes it by mainstrength, and very quickly, around the load, and running his forkthrough the heap, throws it upon the mountain-high load in atwinkling--an admirable, deft performance. 

Hay-making is a really beautiful process: the clicking mower cutting itsclean, wide swath, a man stepping after, where the hay is very heavy, tothrow the windrow back a little. Then, after lying to wilt and dry inthe burning sun--all full of good odours--the horse-rake draws it neatlyinto wide billows, and after that, John, the Pole, and I roll thebillows into tumbles. Or, if the hay is slow in drying, as it was notthis year, the kicking tedder goes over it, spreading it widely. Thenthe team and rack on the smooth-cut meadow and Bill on the load, andJohn and I pitching on; and the talk and badinage that goes on, theexcitement over disturbed field mice, the discussion of the best methodsof killing woodchucks, tales of marvellous exploits of loaders andstackers, thrilling incidents of the wet year of '98 when two men andone team saved four acres of hay by working all night--"with lanterns, Ijing"--much talk of how she goes on, "she" being the hay, and no end ofobservations upon the character, accomplishments, faults, and excessesof the sedate old horses waiting comfortably out in front, half hiddenby the mountain of hay above them and nibbling at the tumbles as they goby. 

Then the proud moment when Bill the driver, with legs apart, almostpushing on the reins, drives his horses up the hill. 

"Go it, Dick. Let 'er out, Daisy. Stiddy, ol' boy. Whoa, there. Easedown now. Hey, there, John, block the wheel--block the wheel I tell ye. Ah-h now, jes' breathe a bit. I jing, it's hot. "

And then the barn, the cavernous dark doors, the hoofs of the horsesthundering on the floor, the smell of cattle from below, the pigeons inthe loft whirring startled from their perches. Then the hot, scented, dusty "pitching off" and "mowing in"--a fine process, an _honest_process: men sweating for what they get. 

As I came in from the field that night the sun was low in the hills, and a faint breeze had begun to blow, sweetly cool after the burningheat of the day. And I felt again that curious deep sense I have sooften here in the country, of the soundness and reality of the plainthings of life. 

CHAPTER X

THE OLD STONE MASON

Of well-flavoured men, I know none better than those who live close tothe soil or work in common things. Men are like roses and lilacs, which, too carefully cultivated to please the eye, lose something of theirnative fragrance. One of the best-flavoured men I know is my friend, theold stone mason. 

To-day I rode over with the old stone mason to select some wide stonesfor steps in my new building. The old man loves stones. All his lifelong--he is now beyond seventy years old--he has lived among stones, lifted stones, fitted stones. He knows all the various kinds, shapes, sizes, and where they will go best in a wall. He can tell at a glancewhere to strike a stone to make it fit a particular place, and out of agreat pile he can select with a shrewd eye the stone for the exactopening he has to fill. He will run his stubby rough hand over a stoneand remark:

"Fine face that. Ye don't see many such stones these days, " as though hewere speaking of the countenance of a friend. 

I veritably believe there are stones that smile at him, stones thatfrown at him, stones that appear good or ill-humoured to him as he bendshis stocky strong body to lift or lay them. He is a slow man, a slow, steady, geologic man, as befits one who works with the elemental stuffof nature. His arms are short and his hands powerful. He has been aservant of stones in this neighbourhood alone for upward of fifty years. 

He loves stones and can no more resist a good stone than I a good book. When going about the country, if he sees comely stones in a waysidepile, or in a fine-featured old fence he will have them, whether or no, and dickers for them with all the eagerness, sly pride, andhalf-concealed cunning with which a lover of old prints chaffers for aSeymour Haden in a second-hand book shop. And when he has bought them hetakes the first idle day he has, and with his team of old horses goesinto the hills, or wherever it may be, and brings them down. He has thempiled about his barn and even in his yard, as another man might haveflower beds. And he can tell you, as he told me to-day, just where astone of such a size and such a face can be found, though it be at thebottom of a pile. No book lover with a feeling sense for the place inhis cases where each of his books may be found has a sharper instinctthan he. In his pocket he carries a lump of red chalk, and when we hadmade our selections he marked each stone with a broad red cross. 

I think it good fortune that I secured the old stone mason to do mywork, and take to myself some credit for skill in enticing him. He ispast seventy years old, though of a ruddy fresh countenance and a clearbright eye, and takes no more contracts, and is even reluctantlypersuaded to do the ordinary stone work of the neighbourhood. He is"well enough off, " as the saying goes, to rest during the remainder ofhis years, for he has lived a temperate and frugal life, owns his ownhome with the little garden behind it, and has money in the bank. But hecan be prevailed upon, like an old artist who has reached the time oflife when it seems as important to enjoy as to create, he can sometimesbe prevailed upon to lay a wall for the joy of doing it. 

So I had the stone hauled onto the ground, the best old field stone Icould find, and I had a clean, straight foundation dug, and when all wasready I brought the old man over to look at it. I said I wanted hisadvice. No sooner did his glance light upon the stone, no sooner did hesee the open and ready earth than a new light came in his eye. His stepquickened and as he went about he began to hum an old tune under hisbreath. I knew then that I had him! He had taken fire. I could see thathis eye was already selecting the stones that should "go down, " the finesquare stones to make the corners or cap the wall, and measuring with atrue eye the number of little stones for the fillers. In no time at allhe had agreed to do my work; indeed, would have felt aggrieved if I hadnot employed him. 

I enjoyed the building of the wall, I think, as much as he did, andhelped him what I could by rolling the larger stones close down to theedge of the wall. As the old man works he talks, if any one cares tolisten, or if one does not care to listen he is well content to remainsilent among his stones. But I enjoyed listening, for nothing in thisworld is so fascinating to me as the story of how a man has come to bewhat he is. When we think of it there are no abstract adventures in thisworld, but only your adventure and my adventure, and it is only as wecome to know a man that we can see how wonderful his life has been. 

He told me all about the great walls and the little walls--miles andmiles of them--he has built in the course of fifty years. He told ofcrude boyhood walls when he was a worker for wages only, he told ofproud manhood walls when he took contracts for foundations, retainingwalls, and even for whole buildings, such as churches, where the workwas mostly of stone; he told me of thrilling gains and profits, and ofdepressing losses; and he told me of his calm later work, again onwages, for which he is chosen as a master of his craft. A whole longlifetime of it--and the last years the best of all!

As we drove up yesterday to select the steps from his piles of old fieldstone, riding behind his great, slow, hairy-hoofed horse, in thebattered and ancient wagon, he pointed with his stubby whip to this orthat foundation, the work of his hands. 

"Fine job, that, " said he, and I looked for the first time in my life atthe beautiful stonework beneath the familiar home of a friend. I hadseen the house a thousand times, and knew well the people in it, but myunobservant eye had never before rested consciously upon that bit ofbasement wall. How we go through life, losing most of the beauties of itfrom sheer inability to see! But the old man, as he drives about, rarelysees houses at all, especially wooden houses, and for all modern stuccoand cement work he entertains a kind of lofty contempt. Sham work of ahasty and unskilled age! He never, I think, put in a shovelful of cementexcept in the place where it belongs, as a mortar for good walls, andnever will do so as long as he lives. So long as he lives the standardsof high art will never be debased!

He built that foundation, and this chimney, he worked on the tower ofthe Baptist church in the town, "and never yet has there been a crack inher, winter or summer"; and more than forty years ago he laid thecornerstone of the old schoolhouse, the foundation walls of which standto-day as sound and strong as they were when they were put down. 

In dry walls I think the old stone mason takes the greatest pride ofall: for it is in the dry wall--I mean by that a wall laid withoutmortar--that the sheer art of the mason comes most into play. Any onecan throw a wall together if he has mortar to make it stick, but a drywall must stand out for what it is, built solid from the bottom up, eachstone resting securely upon those below it, and braced and nested in bythe sheer skill of the mason. The art of the dry wall is the ancientheritage of New England and speaks not only of the sincerity and theconscientiousness of the old Puritan spirit but strikes the higher noteof beauty. Many of the older walls I know are worth going far to see, for they exhibit a rare sense of form and proportion, and are sometimesset in the landscape with a skill that only the Master-Artist himselfcould exceed. Those old, hard-wrought stone fences of the Burnham Hillsand Crewsbury, the best of them, were honestly built, and built to lasta thousand years. A beautiful art--and one that is passing away! It isthe dry wall that stands of itself that the old stone mason loves bestof all. 

As we drove along the road the old man pointed out to me with his stubbywhip so many examples of his work that it seemed finally as if he hadborne a hand in nearly everything done in this neighbourhood in the lasthalf-century. He has literally built himself into the country and intothe town, and at seventy years of age he can look back upon it all withhonest pride. It stands. No jerry-work anywhere. No cracks. It stands. 

I never realized before how completely the neighbourhood rests upon thework of this simple old man. He _founded_ most of the homes here, andupon his secure walls rest many of the stores, the churches, and theschools of the countryside. I see again how important each man is to thecomplete fabric of civilization and know that we are to leave no oneout, despise no one, look down upon no one. 

He told me stories of this ancient settler and of that. 

He was a powerful queer man--he wanted the moss left on his stoneswhen I put 'em in; never a hammer touched the facings of _his_ wall. .. 

"That is properly a woman's wall. She was the boss, you might call it, and wanted stone, but _he_ wanted brick. So you see the front, wherepeople can see it, is of stone, but the sides is all brick. "

Thus like the true artist that he is, he has not only built himself hisown honesty, truth, skill, into the town, but he has built in theinexhaustible peculiarities, the radiant charm, the hates and the loves, of the people of this place. He has mirrored his own little age instone. He knows the town, indeed, better than most of us, having a kindof stone-age knowledge of it--the fundamental things men build in whenthey set about building permanently. 

"And that is what you might call a spite-wall, " said he, showing me along wall leading between two shady homes, making one of them a prisonon the south, and the other a prison on the north. He told me the storyof an ancient and bitter quarrel between two old friends, a story whichsounded to-day among spring blossoms like the account of some ancientbaronial feud. 

But if the old stone mason has built walls to keep enemies apart howmany more walls has he built to keep friends together? How many timeshas he been consulted by shy lovers seeking a foundation for a new home, a new family, how many times by Darby and Joan planning a resting placefor the sunny closing years of their lives! He could point, indeed, toone wall that symbolized hatred; all the others meant homes, roof-trees, families, or they were the foundations for the working places of men, orelse, like the tower of the church, they pointed heavenward and werebuilt to the glory of God. 

The old stone mason has not the slightest idea that he has done anythingunusual or wonderful. He is as simple and honest a man as ever I knew;and if he has pride, simple and honest also in that. He was anxious notto charge me too much for the stone I bought--in an age like this! Ihave never talked with him about God, or about religion: I had no needto. 

[Illustration: All the others meant homes, roof-trees, families, orelse, like the tower of the church, they pointed heavenward, and werebuilt to the glory of God. ]

He has done his duty in other ways by his time and his place. He hasbrought up a large family of children; and has known sorrow and loss, as well as happiness and contentment. Two of his children were taken inone day with pneumonia. He told me about it with a quaver in his oldvoice. 

"How long ago was it?" I asked. 

"Twenty-seven years. "

He has sons and daughters left, and two of the sons he has well trainedas stone masons after him. They are good as young men go in a degenerateage. They insist on working in cement! He has grandchildren in school, and spoils them. 

He is also a man of public interests and upon town-meeting day puts onhis good clothes and sits modestly toward the back of the hall. Thoughhe rarely says anything he always has a strong opinion, an opinion assound and hard as stones and as simple, upon most of the questions thatcome up. And he votes as he thinks, though the only man in meeting whovotes that way. For when a man works in the open, laying walls true tolines and measurements, being honest with natural things, he comesclear, sane, strong, upon many things. I would sooner trust his judgmentupon matters that are really important as between man and man, and manand God, than I would trust the town lawyer. And if he has grown alittle testy with some of the innovations of modern life, and thinksthey did everything better forty years ago--and says so--he speaks, atleast, his honest conviction. 

If I can lay my walls as true as he does, if I can build myself a thirdpart as firmly into any neighbourhood as he has into this, if at seventyyears of age--if ever I live to lay walls with joy at that time oflife--if I can look back upon _my_ foundations, _my_ heaven-pointingtowers, and find no cracks or strains in them, I shall feel that I havemade a great success of my life. .. . 

I went out just now: the old man was stooping to lift a heavy stone. Hishat was off and the full spring sunshine struck down warmly upon theruddy bald spot on the top of his head, the white hair around about itlooking silvery in that light. As he placed the stone in the wall, hestraightened up and rubbed his stubby hand along it. 

"A fine stone that!" said he. 

CHAPTER XI

AN AUCTION OF ANTIQUES

"I would not paint a face Or rocks or streams or treesMere semblances of things-- But something more than these. "

"I would not play a tune Upon the sheng or luteWhich did not also sing Meanings that else were mute. "

John Templeton died on the last day of August, but it was not until someweeks later that his daughter Julida, that hard-favoured woman, set atime for the auction. It fell happily upon a mellow autumn day, and as Idrove out I saw the apples ripening in all the orchards along the road, and the corn was beginning to look brown, and the meadows by the brookwere green with rowen. It was an ideal day for an auction, and farmersand townsmen came trooping from all parts of the country, for theTempleton antiques were to be sold. 

John Templeton lived in one house for seventy-eight years; he was bornthere, and you will find the like of that in few places in America. Itwas a fine house for its time, for any time, and not new when JohnTempleton was born. A great, solid, square structure, such as they builtwhen the Puritan spirit was virile in New England, with an almost Greekbeauty of measured lines. It has a fanlight over the front door, windowsexquisitely proportion, and in the center a vast brick chimney. Evennow, though weathered and unpainted, it stands four-square upon theearth with a kind of natural dignity. A majestic chestnut tree growsnear it, and a large old barn and generous sheds, now somewhatdilapidated, ramble away to the rear. 

Enclosing the fields around about are stone fences representing theinfinite labour of John Templeton's forebears. More toil has gone intothe stone fences of New England, free labour of a free people, than everwent into the slave-driven building of the Pyramids of Egypt. 

I knew John Templeton in his old age--a stiff, weather-beaten old mandriving to town in a one-horse buggy. 

"How are you, Mr. Templeton?"

"Comin' on, comin' on. " This was his invariable reply. 

He had the old New England pronunciation, now disappearing. He said"rud" for road, "daown" for down, and gave an indescribable twist to theword garden, best spelled "gardin. " He had also the old New Englandways. He was forehanded with his winter woodpile, immaculately neat withhis dooryard, determined in his Sunday observance, and if he put thesmall apples in the middle of the barrel he refused to raise tobacco, lest it become a cause of stumbling to his neighbour. He paid his debts, disciplined his children, and in an age which has come to look chummilyupon God, he dreaded His wrath. 

He grew a peculiar, very fine variety of sweet apple which I have neverseen anywhere else. He called it the Pumpkin Sweet, for it was of a richyellow. I can see him yet, driving into town with a shallow wagon boxhalf full of this gold of the orchard; can see him turn stiffly to getone of the apples for me; can hear him say in the squeaky voice of age:

"Ye won't find no sweeter apples hereabout, I can tell ye that. "

He was a dyed-in-the-wool abolition Republican and took the Boston_Transcript_ for forty-six years. He left two cords of them piled up ina back storeroom. He loved to talk about Napoleon Bonaparte and theBattle of Waterloo, and how, if there had not been that delay of half anhour, the history of the world might have been different. I can see himsaying, with the words puffing out his loose cheeks:

"And then Blooker kem up--"

To the very last, even when his eyes were too dim to read and his voicewas cracked, he would start up, like some old machine set a-whirringwhen you touched the rusty lever, and talk about the Battle of Waterloo. 

No one, so far as I know, ever heard him complain, or bemoan his age, orregret the change in the times; and when his day came, he lay down uponhis bed and died. 

"Positively nothing will be reserved, " were the familiar words of theposter, and they have a larger meaning in an old country neighbourhoodthan the mere sale of the last pan and jug and pig and highboy. Thoughwe live with our neighbours for fifty years we still secretly wonderabout them. We still suspect that something remains covered, somethingkept in and hidden away, some bits of beauty unappreciated--as they are, indeed, with ourselves. But death snatches away the last friendlygarment of concealment; and after the funeral the auction. We may enternow. The doors stand at last flung widely open; all the attics have beenransacked; all the chests have been turned out; a thousand privaciesstand glaringly revealed in the sunny open spaces of the yard. Positively nothing will be reserved; everything will be knocked down tothe highest bidder. What wonder that the neighbourhood gathers, whatwonder that it nods its head, leaves sentences half uttered, smilesenigmatically. 

Nearly all the contents of the house had been removed to the yard, underthe great chesnut tree. A crowd of people, mostly women, were movingabout among the old furniture, the old furniture that had been in JohnTempleton's family for no one knows how long--old highboys and lowboys, a beautifully simple old table or so, and beds with carved posts, andhand-wrought brasses, and an odd tall clock that struck with sonorousdignity. These things, which had been temptingly advertised as"antiques, " a word John Templeton never knew, were only the commonserviceable things of uncounted years of family life. 

Nothing about the place was of any great value except the antiques, andit was these that drew the well-dressed women in automobiles from as faraway as Hempfield and Nortontown; and yet there were men in plenty topoke the pigs, look sarcastically at the teeth of the two old horses, and examine with calculating and rather jeering eyes John Templeton'sancient buggy, and the harness and the worn plough and cultivator andmowing machine. Everything seems so cheap, so poor, so unprotected, when the spirit has departed. 

Under the chestnut tree the swarthy auctioneer with his amiablecountenance and ironical smile acquired through years of dispassionateobservation of the follies of human emotion, the mutability of humanaffairs, the brevity of human endeavour, that brought everything at lastunder his hammer--there by the chestnut tree the auctioneer had takenhis stand in temporary eminence upon an old chest, with an ancientkitchen cupboard near him which served at once as a pulpit forexhortation, and a block for execution. Already the well-worn smile hadcome pat to his countenance, and the well-worn witticisms were ready tohis tongue. 

"Now, gentlemen, if you'll give me such attention as you can spare fromthe ladies, we have here to-day----"

But I could not, somehow, listen to him: the whole scene, the whole deepevent, had taken hold upon me strangely. It was so full of humanmeaning, human emotion, human pathos. I drifted away from the crowd andstepped in at the open door of the old house, and walked through theempty, resounding rooms with their curious old wallpaper and lowceilings and dusty windows. And there were the old fireplaces where theheavy brick had been eaten away by the pokings and scrapings of acentury; and the thresholds worn by the passage of many feet, theromping feet of children, the happy feet of youth the bride passed hereon her wedding night with her arm linked in the arm of the groom; thesturdy, determined feet of maturity; the stumbling feet of old agecreeping in; the slow, pushing feet of the bearers with the last burden, crowding out--

The air of the house had a musty, shut-in odour, ironically cut through, as all old things are, by the stinging odour of the new: the boiling ofthe auction coffee in the half-dismantled kitchen, the epochal moment inthe life of Julia Templeton. I could hear, occasionally, her high, strident worried voice ordering a helper about. Such a hard-favouredwoman!

It is the studied and profitable psychology of the auction that therubbish must be sold first--pots and bottles and jugs at five-cent bids, and hoes at ten--and after that, the friction of the contest havingwarmed in the bidders an amiable desire to purchase goods they do notwant and cannot use, the auctioneer gradually puts forth the treasuresof the day. 

As I came out of the old house I could see that the mystic web had beenspun, that the great moment of the sale was arriving. The auctioneer wasleaning forward now upon the tall cupboard with an air of command, andsurveying the assembled crowd with a lordly eye. 

"Now, Jake, careful there--pass it along--steady. .. . We come now to thecheff dooves of the day, the creem delly creems of this sale. Gentleman_and_ ladies, it is a great moment in the life of an auctioneer when hecan offer, for sale, free and without reservation, such treasures asthese. .. . "

I could feel the warming interest of the crowd gathering in more closelyabout Mr. Harpworth, the furtive silences of shrewd bargainers, eagerness masked as indifference, and covetousness cloaking itself withsmiling irony. It is in the auction that trade glorifies itself finallyas an Art. 

"Here, gentlemen _and_ ladies, is a genuine antique, hand-wrought andsolid all the way through. Just enough worn to give the flavour anddistinction of age. Well built in the first place, plain, simple lines, but, ladies, _beautiful_. "

It was the tall four-post bed he was selling and he now put his handupon this object--a hardy service with a cunningly simulated air ofdeference. It was to be profaned by no irreverent handling!

"What am I offered for this heirloom of the Templeton family? Ten? Ten!Fifteen over there, thank you, Mr. Cody. Why, gentlemen, that bed cannotbe duplicated in America! A real product of Colonial art! Look at thecolour of it! Where will you find such depth of colour in any modernpiece? Age varnished it, gentlemen, age and use--the use of a hundredyears. .. . Twenty over there, twenty I hear, twenty, twenty, make itthirty. .. . Speak up now, Ike, we know you've come here to-day to makeyour fortune--do I hear thirty?"

No sooner had the great bed been sold ("it's yours, Mrs. Craigie, atreasure and dirt cheap") there came an ancient pair of hand-wroughtandirons, and a spider-legged table, and a brass warming-pan, and abanjo clock. .. . 

I scarcely know how to explain it, but the sale of these inanimateantiques, so charged with the restrained grace, the reticent beauty, theserviceable strength, of a passing age, took hold upon me with strangeintensity. In times of high emotion the veil between sight and insightslips aside and that which lies about us suddenly achieves a higherreality. We are conscious of

"Something beside the formSomething beyond the sound. "

It came to me with a thrill that this was no mere sale of antique woodand brass and iron, but a veritable auction, here symbolized, of thedecaying fragments of a sternly beautiful civilization. 

I looked off across the stony fields, now softly green in the sunlight, from which three generations of the Templeton family had wrung an heroicliving; I looked up at the majestic old house where they had lived andmarried and died. .. . 

As my eye came back to the busy scene beneath the chestnut tree itseemed to me, how vividly I cannot describe--that beside or behind theenergetic and perspiring Mr. Harpworth there stood Another Auctioneer. And I thought he had flowing locks and a patriarchal beard, and a scythefor a sign of the uncertainty of life, and a glass to mark the swiftnessof its passage. He was that Great Auctioneer who brings all things atlast under his inexorable hammer. 

After that, though Mr. Harpworth did his best, he claimed my attentiononly intermittently from that Greater Sale which was going on at hisside, from that Greater Auctioneer who was conducting it with suchconsummate skill--for _he_ knew that nothing is for sale but life. Themahogany highboy, so much packed and garnered life cut into inanimatewood; the andirons, so much life; the bookshelves upon which JohnTempleton kept his "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, " so much life. Life forsale, gentlemen! What am I offered to-day for this bit of life--andthis--and this--

Mr. Harpworth had paused, for even an auctioneer, in the high moment ofhis art, remains human; and in the silence following the cessation ofthe metallic click of his voice, "Thirty, thirty, thirt, thirt--make itthirty-five--thank you--forty, " one could hear the hens gossiping in thedistant yard. 

"There were craftsmen in those days, gentlemen, " he was resuming; "lookat this example of their art--there is quality here and durability----"

At this point the Great Auctioneer broke in upon my attention and caughtup Mr. Harpworth's words:

"Yes, quality and durability--quality and durability. I also have hereto-day, and will offer you, gentlemen, a surpassing antique, not builtof wood nor fashioned in brass or iron, but a thing long attached tothese acres and this house. I present for your consideration the marriedlife of John Templeton and Hannah his wife. They lived together fortyyears, and the record scarcely shows a dent. In all that time hardly aword of love passed between them; but never a word of hatred, either. They had a kind of hard and fast understanding, like the laws of Moses. He did the work of the fields and she did the work of the house, fromsunrise to sunset. On Sunday they went to church together. He got out atfive o'clock to milk and harness up; and it made double work for her, what with getting the children cleaned, and the milk taken care of, andthe Sunday dinner made ready. But neither he nor she every doubted orcomplained. It was the Lord's way. She bore him eight children. She toldhim before the last one came that she was not equal to it. .. . After thatshe was an invalid for seventeen years until she died. And there wasloss of children to bear between them, and sickness, and creeping age, but this bit of furniture held firm to the last. Gentlemen, it was madsolid, no veneer, a good job all the way through. "

As he spoke I thought that his roving eye (perhaps it was only my own!)fell upon Johnny Holcomb, whose married life has been full ofvicissitudes. 

"John, take this home with you; _you_ can use it. "

"Nope, no such married life for me, " I thought I could hear himresponding, rather pleased than not to be the butt of the auctioneer. 

"Do I hear any bids?" the Great Auctioneer was saying, almost in thewords of Mr. Harpworth. "_What!_ No one wants n married life like this?Well, put it aside, Jake. It isn't wanted. Too old-fashioned. "

It was Julia Templeton herself who now appeared with certain of theintimate and precious "bedroom things"--a wonderful old linenbedspread, wrought upon with woollen figures, and exaling an ancient andexquisite odour of lavender, and a rag rug or so, and a little oldrocking chair with chintz coverings in which more than one Templetonmother had rocked her baby to sleep. Julia herself----

I saw Julia, that hard-favoured woman, for the first time at thatmoment, really saw her. How fiercely she threw down the spread and therugs! How bold and unweeping her eyes! How hard and straight the linesof her mouth!

"Here they are, Mr. Harpworth!"

How shrill her voice; and how quickly she turned back to the noisykitchen! I could see the angular form, the streakings of gray in herhair. . .. 

"What am I offered now for this precious antique? This hand-made spread?Everything sold without reserve! Come, now, don't let this opportunityslip by. " He leaned forward confidentially and persuasively: "Fellahcitizens, styles change and fashions pass away, but things made likethese, good lines, strong material, honest work, they never growold. .. . "

Here the Shadowy Auctioneer broke in again and lifted me out of thatlimited moment. 

"A true word!" he was saying. "Styles change and fashions pass away, andonly those things that are well made, and made for service the beautifulthings remain. I am offering to-day, without reservation, anotherprecious antique. What will you give for such a religious faith as thatof John Templeton? Worn for a lifetime and sound to the end. He read theBible every Sunday morning of his life, went to church, and did hisreligious duty by his children. Do you remember young Joe Templeton?Wouldn't learn his chapter one Sunday, and the old gentleman prayedabout it and then beat him with a hitching strap. Joe ran away from homeand made his fortune in Minnesota. Nearly broke the mother's heart, andold John's, too; but he thought it right, and never repented it. Gentlemen, an honest man who feared God and lived righteously all hisdays! What am I offered for this durable antique, this characteristicproduct of New England? Do I hear a bid?"

At this I felt coming over me that strange urge of the auction, to bidand to buy. A rare possession indeed, not without a high, stern kind ofbeauty! It would be wonderful to possess such a faith; but what had I tooffer that Shadowy Auctioneer? What coin that would redeem past timesand departed beliefs?

It was curious how the words of Mr. Harpworth fitted into the fabric ofmy imaginings. When he next attracted my attention he was throwing uphis hands in a fine semblance of despair. We were such obtusepurchasers!

"I think, " said Mr. Harpworth, "that this crowd came here to-day only toeat Julia Templeton's auction luncheon. What's the matter with this heregeneration? You don't want things that are well made and durable, butonly things that are cheap and flashy. Put 'er aside, Jake. We'll sell'er yet to some historical museum devoted to the habits and customs ofthe early Americans. "

He was plainly disgusted with us, and we felt it keenly, and were gladand pleased when, a moment later, he gave evidence of being willing togo on with us, paltry as we were. 

"Jake, pass up that next treasure. "

His spirits were returning; his eyes gleamed approvingly upon the newlypresented antique. He looked at us with fresh confidence; he was stillhopeful that we would rise to his former good opinion of us. 

"And now before I sell the hail clock by Willard, date of 1822, I amgoing to offer what is possibly the best single piece in this sale. .. . "

Here again the Old Auctioneer, having caught his cue broke in. When hespoke, who could listen to Mr. Harpworth?

". .. The best single piece in this sale, gentlemen! I offer you now theTempleton family pride! A choice product of old New England. A littlebattered, but still good and sound. The Templetons! They never didanything notable except to work, work early and late, summer and winter, for three generations. They were proud of any one who bore the Templetonname; they were proud even of Jim, simple Jim, who got a job driving thedelivery wagon at the hill store, and drove it for twenty-two years andwas drowned in Mill River. I'll tell you what family pride meant to oldJohn Templeton. .. . "

I thought he leaned forward to take us into his confidence, motioningat the same time toward the house. 

"You know Julia Templeton----"

Know her? Of course we knew her! Knew her as only the country knows itsown. 

"When Julia ran away with that sewing-machine agent--it was her onlychance!--old John Templeton drove his best cow into town and sold her, he mortgaged his team of horses, and went after the girl and brought herhome with him. They were firm and strong and as righteous as God withher; and they paid off, without whining, the mortgages on the horses, and never spoke of the loss of the cow--but never forgot it. They heldup their heads to the end. Gentlemen, what am I offered for thisinteresting antique, this rare work of art?"

 * * * * *

The auction was considered, upon the whole, a great success. Mr. Harpworth himself said so. Ike, the Jewish dealer, bought the familyclock and the spring-tooth harrow, and even bid on the family crayonportraits (the frames could be sold for something or other); a Swedebought the pigs and the old buggy; an Irish teamster bid in JohnTempleton's horses, and a Pole, a good man, I know him well, bought theland, and will no doubt keep his geese in the summer kitchen, and getrich from the cultivation of the ancient fields. While old JohnTempleton bowed himself humbly before a wrathful God he would never godown on his knees, as the Poles do, to the fertile earth. And--Iforgot--an Italian from Nortontown bought for a song the apple andchestnut crops, and busy third generation Americans loaded in theantiques and drove off with them to the city. 

The last I saw of Julia Templeton, that hard-favoured woman, she wasstanding, an angular figure, in the midst of the wreck of the luncheondishes, one arm wrapped in her apron, the other hand shading her eyeswhile she watched the company, in wagons and automobiles, trailing awayto the westward, and the towns. .. . 

The sale was over; but the most valuable antiques of all found nopurchasers: they were left behind with Julia Templeton: only she coulduse them. 

CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN OF FORTY-FIVE

We have an Astonishing Woman in this community. She acts in a way thatno one expects, and while we are intensely interested in everything shedoes, and desire to know about it to the uttermost detail, we areinclined to speak of her in bated breath. 

Some Woman to Talk About in a country neighbourhood is a kind of publicnecessity. She fills one of the stated functions like the town assessor, or the president of the Dorcas Society; and if ever the office fallsvacant we have immediate resort to one of those silent elections atwhich we choose our town celebrities. There are usually severalcandidates, and the campaign is accompanied by much heated argument andexemplification. We have our staunch party men and our irresponsibleindependents on whom you can never put your finger; and if we aresometimes a little vague in our discussion of principles and issues weshare with our national political leaders an intense interest inpersonalities. Prominent citizens "come out" for this candidate or that, we "spring surprises, " and launch new booms, and often, at the lastmoment, we are taken off our feet by the circulation of comebacks. Itake a pardonable pride, however, in saying, to the credit of ourdemocratic institutions that most of the candidates elected are chosenstrictly upon merit. 

I shall never forget the afternoon, now more than a year ago, thatHarriet came up the road bearing the news which, beyond a doubt, placedthe present incumbent in office; and has served to keep her there, despite the efforts in certain quarters, which shall be nameless, to usethat pernicious instrument of radicalism, the recall. 

I can always tell when Harriet brings important news. She has a slightlyquicker step, carries her head a little more firmly, and when she speaksimpresses her message upon me with a lowered voice. When Harriet looksat me severely and drops down an octave I prepare for the worst. 

"David, " she said, "Mary Starkweather has gone to live in the barn!"

"In the _barn_!"

"In the barn. "

I don't know quite why it is, but I dislike being surprised, and do mybest to cover it up, and, besides, I have always liked MaryStarkweather. So I remarked, as casually as I could:

"Why not? It's a perfectly good barn. "

"David Grayson!"

"Well, it is. It's a better building to-day than many of the people ofthis town live in. Why shouldn't Mary Starkweather live in the barn ifshe wants to? It's her barn. "

"But, _David_--there are her children--and her husband!"

"There always are, when anybody wants to live in a barn. "

"I shall not talk with you any more, " said Harriet, "until you can beserious. "

I had my punishment, as I richly deserved to have, in the gnawing ofunsatisfied curiosity, which is almost as distressing as a troubledconscience. 

Within the next few days, I remember, I heard the great news buzzingeverywhere I went. We had conjectured that the barn was being refittedfor the family of a caretaker, and it was Mary Starkweather herself, oursole dependable representative of the Rich, who was moving in! MaryStarkweather, who had her house in town, and her home in the country, and her automobiles, and her servants, and her pictures, and her books, to say nothing of her husband and her children and her children's maidgoing to live in her barn! I leave it to you if there was not a validreason for our commotion. 

It must have been two weeks later that I went to town by the upper hillroad in order to pass the Starkweather place. It is a fine old estate, the buildings, except the barn, set well back from the road with aspacious garden near them, and pleasant fields stretching away on everyhand. As I skirted the shoulder of the hill I looked eagerly for thefirst glimpse of the barn. I confess that I had woven a thousand storiesto explain the mystery, and had reached the point where I could nolonger resist seeing if I could solve it. 

Well, the barn was transformed. Two or three new windows, a door with alittle porch, a lattice or so for vines, a gable upon the roof liftingan inquiring eyebrow--and what was once a barn had become a charmingcottage. It seemed curiously to have come alive, to have acquired apersonality of its own. A corner of the great garden had been cut offand included in the miniature grounds of the cottage; and a simplearbour had been built against a background of wonderful beech trees. Youfelt at once a kind of fondness for it. 

I saw Mary Starkweather in her garden, in a large straw hat, with atrowel in her hand. 

"How are you, David Grayson?" she called out when I stopped. 

"I have been planning for several days, " I said, "to happen casually byyour new house. "

"Have you?"

"You don't know how you have stirred our curiosity. We haven't had agood night's rest since you moved in. "

"I've no doubt of it, " she laughed. "Won't you come in? I'd like to tellyou all about it. "

"I also prepared to make excuses for not stopping, " I said, "and thoughtup various kinds of urgent business, such as buying a new snow shovel touse next winter, but after making these excuses I intended to stop--ifI were sufficiently urged. "

"You are more than urged: you are commanded. "

As I followed her up the walk she said earnestly:

"Will you do me a favour? When you come in will you tell me the firstimpression my living-room gives you? No second thoughts. Tell meinstantly. "

"I'll do it. " I said, my mind leaping eagerly to all manner ofmysterious surprises. 

At the centre of the room she turned toward me and with a sweepingbackward motion of the arms, made me a bow--a strong figure instinctwith confident grace: a touch of gray in the hair, a fleeting look ofold sadness about the eyes. 

"Now, David Grayson, " she said, "quick!"

It was not that the room itself was so remarkable as that it struck meas being confusingly different from the heavily comfortable rooms of theold Starkweather house with their crowded furnishings, their overloadedmantels, their plethoric bookcases. 

"I cannot think of you yet, " I stumbled, "as being here. "

"Isn't it _like_ me?"

"It is a beautiful room--" I groped lamely. 

"I was afraid you would say that. "

"But it is. It really is. "

"Then I've failed, after all. "

She said it lightly enough, but there was an undertone of realdisappointment in her voice. 

"I'm in rather the predicament, " I said, "of old Abner Coates. Youprobably don't know Abner. He sells nursery stock, and each spring whenhe comes around and I tell him that the peach trees or the raspberrybushes I bought of him the year before have not done well, he says, withthe greatest astonishment, 'Wal, now, ye ain't said what I hoped yewould. ' I see that I haven't said what you hoped I would. "

It was too serious a matter, however, for Mary Starkweather to jokeabout. 

"But, David Grayson, " she said, "isn't it _simple_?"

I glanced around me with swift new comprehension. 

"Why, yes, it _is_ simple. "

I saw that my friend was undergoing some deep inner change of which thisroom, this renovated barn, were mere symbols. 

"Tell me, " I said, "how you came to such a right-about-face. "

"It's just that!" she returned earnestly, "It _is_ a right-about-face. I think I am really in earnest for the first time in my life. "

I had a moment of flashing wonder if her marriage had not been inearnest, a flashing picture of Richard Starkweather with his rathertired, good-humoured face, and I wondered if her children were notearnest realities to her, if her busy social life had meant nothing. Then I reflected that we all have such moments, when the richestexperiences of the past seem as nothing in comparison with the fervourof this glowing moment. 

"Everything in my life in the past, " she was saying, "seems to havehappened to me. Life has done things _for_ me; I have had so few chancesof doing anything for myself. "

"And now you are expressing yourself. "

"Almost for the first time in my life!"

She paused. "All my life, it seems to me, I have been smothered withthings. Just things! Too much of everything. All my time has been takenup in caring for things and none in enjoying them. "

"I understand!" I said with a warm sense of corroboration and sympathy. 

"I had so many pictures on my walls that I never saw, really saw, any ofthem. I saw the dust on them, I saw the cracks in the frames, thatneeded repairing, I even saw better ways of arranging them, but I veryrarely saw, with the inner eye, what the artists were trying to tell me. And how much time I have wasted on mere food and clothing--it isappalling! I had become nothing short of a slave to my house and mythings. "

"I see now, " I said, "why you have just one rose on your table. "

"Yes"--she returned eagerly--"isn't it a beauty! I spent half an hourthis morning looking for the best and most perfect rose in the garden, and there it is!"

She was now all alight with her idea, and I saw her, as we sometimes seeour oldest friends, as though I had not seen her before. She was thatphenomenon of the modern world--the free woman of forty-five. 

When a woman reaches the old age of youth, the years between forty andforty-five, she either surrenders or revolts. In the older days inAmerica it was nearly always surrender. Those women of a pastgeneration bore many children: how many graves there are in our hillcemeteries of women of forty to fifty who died leading families of fiveor eight or ten children! How many second and third wives there were, often with second and third families. Or if they did not die, howterribly they toiled, keeping the house, clothing the children, cookingthe food. Or if they bore no children, yet they were bound down by athousand chains of convention and formality. 

But in these days we have a woman of forty-five who has not surrendered. She is a vigorous, experienced, active-minded human being, justbeginning to look restlessly around her and take a new interest in theworld. Such a woman was Mary Starkweather; and this was her firstrevolt. 

"You cannot imagine, " she was saying, "what a joy it has been tounaccumulate! To get rid of things! To select. "

"To become an artist in life!"

"Yes! At last! What a lot of perfectly worthless trash accumulatesaround us. Not beautiful, not even useful! And it is not only the livesof the well-to-do that are choked and cluttered with things. I wish youcould see the house of our Polish farmer. He's been saving money, andfilling up his house with perfectly worthless ornaments--ornate clocks, gorgeous plush furniture, impossible rugs--and yet he is only doing whatwe are all doing on a more elaborate scale. "

I laughed. 

"That reminds me of a family of squirrels that lives in an oak tree onmy hill, " I said. "I am never tired of watching them. In the fall theywork desperately, stealing all the hickory nuts and chestnuts on myneighbour Horace's back pastures, five times as many as they need, andthen they forget, half the time, where they've hidden them. We're allmore or less in the squirrel stage of civilization. "

"Yes, " she responded. "There are my books! I gathered up books foryears, just squirrel fashion, until I forgot what I had or where I putthem. You cannot know what joy I'm going to have in selecting just theessential books, the ones I want by me for daily companions. All theothers, I see now, are temporary rubbish. "

"And you've made your selections?"

"No, but I'm making them. You'll laugh when you come next time and Ishow them to you. Oh, I am going to be stern with myself. I'm not goingto put a single book in that case for show, nor a single one to give theimpression that I'm profoundly interested in Egypt or Maeterlinck orwoman suffrage, when I'm positively not. "

"It's terribly risky, " I said. 

"And I'm terribly reckless, " she responded. 

As I went onward toward the town I looked back from the hilltop beyondthe big house for a last glimpse of the reconstructed barn, and with acurious warm sense of having been admitted to a new adventure. Here waslife changing under my eyes! Here was a human being struggling with oneof the deep common problems that come to all of us. The revolt fromthings! The struggle with superfluities!

And yet as I walked along the cool aisles of the woods with the quietfields opening here and there to the low hill ridges, and saw the cattlefeeding, and heard a thrush singing in a thicket, I found myself lettinggo--how can I explain it?--relaxing! I had been keyed up to a high pitchthere in that extraordinary room, Yes, it _was_ beautiful--and yet as Ithought of the sharp little green gate, the new gable, the hard, cleanmantel with the cloisonne vase, it wanted something. .. . 

As I was gathering the rowen crop of after-enjoyment which rewards uswhen we reflect freshly upon our adventures, whom should I meet butRichard Starkweather himself in his battered machine. The two boys, oneof whom was driving, and the little girl, were with him. 

"How are you, David?" he called out. "Whoa, there! Draw up, Jamie. "

We looked at each other for a moment with that quizzical, half-humorouslook that so often conveys, better than any spoken words, thesympathetic greeting of friends. I like Richard Starkweather. 

He had come up from the city looking rather worn, for the weather hadbeen trying. He has blue, honest, direct-gazing eyes with small humourwrinkles at the corners. I never knew a man with fewer theories, or witha simpler devotion to the thing at hand, whatever it may be. Ateverything else he smiles, not cynically, for he is too modest in hisregard for his own knowledge; he smiles at everything else because itdoesn't seem quite real to him. 

"Been up to see Mary's new house?" he asked. 

"Yes, " And for the life of me I couldn't help smiling in response. 

"It's a wonder isn't it?"

He thought his wife a very extraordinary woman. I remember his saying tome once, "David, she's got the soul of a poet and the brain of ageneral. "

"It _is_ a wonder, " I responded. 

"I can't decide yet what chair to sit in, nor just what she wants thekids to do. "

I still smiled. 

"I expect she hasn't determined yet, " he went drawling on, "in whatchair I will look most decorative. "

He ruminated. 

"You know, she's got the idea that there's too much of everything. Iguess there is, too--and that she ought to select only those things thatan essential. I've been wondering, if she had more than one husbandwhether or not she'd select me----"

The restless young Jamie was now starting the machine, and RichardStarkweather leaned out and said to me in parting: "isn't she a wonder!Did all the planning herself--wouldn't have an architect--wouldn't havea decorator--all I could do--"

As he turned around I saw him throw one arm carelessly about theshoulders of the sturdy younger boy who sat next him. 

When I got home I told Harriet all about what I had seen and heard. Ithink I must feel when I am retailing such fascinating neighbourhoodevents to Harriet--how she _does_ enjoy them!--I must feel very much asshe does when she is urging me to have just a little more of the newgingerbread. 

In the next few months I watched with indescribable interest theunfolding of the drama of Mary Starkweather. I saw her from time to timethat summer and she seemed, and I think she was, happier than ever shehad been before in her whole life. Making over her garden, selecting the"essential books, " choosing the best pictures for her rooms, evenreforming the clothing of the boys, all with an emphasis upon perfectsimplicity--her mind was completely absorbed. Occasionally Richardappeared upon the stage, a kind of absurd Greek chorus of one, whoremarked what a wonderful woman this was and poked fun at himself and atthe new house, and asserted that Mary could be as simple as ever sheliked, he insisted on thick soup for dinner and would not sacrifice hisbeloved old smoking jacket upon the altar of any new idea. 

"She's a wonder, David, " he'd wind up: "but this simple life is gettingmore complicated every day. "

It was in December, about the middle of the month, as I remember, that Ihad a note one day from Mary Starkweather. 

"The next time you go to town, " it ran, "stop in and see me. I've made adiscovery. "

With such a note as that us my hand it appeared imperative that I go totown at once. I discovered, to Harriet's astonishment, that we wererunning out of all sorts of necessaries. 

"Now, David, " she said, "you know perfectly well that you're just makingup to call on Mary Starkweather. "

"That, " I said, "relieves my conscience of a great burden. "

As I went out of the door I heard her saying: "Why Mary Starkweathershould _care_ to live in her barn. .. . "

It was a sparkling cold day, sun on the snow and the track crunchingunder one's feet, and I walked swiftly and with a warm sense of comingadventure. 

To my surprise there was no smoke in the cottage chimney, and when Ireached the door I found a card pinned upon it:

PLEASE CALL AT THE HOUSE

Mary Starkweather herself opened the door--she had seen me coming--andtook me into the big comfortable old living-room, the big, cluttered, overfurnished living-room, with the two worn upholstered chairs at thefireplace, in which a bright log fire was now burning. There was apleasant litter of books and magazines, and a work basket on the table, and in the bay window an ugly but cheerful green rubber plant in a tub. 

"Well!" I exclaimed. 

"Don't smile--not yet. "

As I looked at her I felt not at all like smiling. 

"I know, " she was saying, "it does have a humorous side. I can see that. Dick has seen it all along. Do you know, although Dick pretends topooh-pooh everything intellectual, he has a really penetrating mind. "

I had a sudden vision of Dick in his old smoking jacket, standing inthe midst of the immaculate cottage that was once a barn, holding hispipe with one finger crooked around the stem just in front of his nosein the way he had, and smiling across at me. 

"Have you deserted the cottage entirely?"

"Oh, we may possibly go back in the spring-----" She paused and lookedinto the fire, her fine, strong face a little sad in composure, full ofthought. 

"I am trying to be honest with myself David. Honest above everythingelse. That's fundamental. It seems to me I have wanted most of all tolearn how to live my life more freely and finely. .. . I thought I wasgetting myself free of things when, as a matter of fact, I was devotingmore time to them than ever before-and, besides that, making life moreor less uncomfortable for Dick and the children. So I've taken mycourage squarely in my hands and come back here into this blessed oldhome, this blessed, ugly, stuffy old home--I've learned _that_ lesson. "

At this, she glanced up at me with that rare smile which sometimesshines out of her very nature: the smile that is herself. 

"I found, " she said, "that when I had finished the work of becomingsimple--there was nothing else left to do. "

I laughed outright, for I couldn't help it, and she joined me. How we dolike people who can laugh at themselves. 

"But, " I said, "there was sound sense in a great deal that you weretrying to do. "

"The fireplace smoked; and the kitchen sink froze up; and the cook leftbecause we couldn't keep her room warm. "

"But you were right, " I interrupted, "and I am not going to be put offby smoking fireplaces or chilly cooks; you were right. We do have toomuch, we are smothered in things, we don't enjoy what we do have--"

I paused. 

"And you were making a beautiful thing, a beautiful house. "

"The trouble with making a beautiful thing, " she replied, "is that whenyou have got it done you must straightway make another. Now I don't wantto keep on building houses or furnishing rooms. I am not after beauty--Imean primarily--what I want is to _live_, live simply, live greatly. "

She was desperately in earnest. 

"Perhaps, " I said, feeling as though I were treading on dangerousground, "you were trying to be simple for the sake of being simple. Iwonder if true simplicity is ever any thing but a by-product. If we aimdirectly for it, it eludes us: but if we are on fire with some greatinterest that absorbs on lives to the uttermost, we forget ourselvesinto simplicity, Everything falls into simple lines around us, like aworn garment. "

I had the rather uncomfortable feeling on the way home that I had beenpreachy; and the moment you became preachy begin to build up barriersbetween yourself and your friends: but that's a defect of character I'venever been able, quite, to overcome. I keep thinking I've got the betterof it, but along will come a beautiful temptation and down I go--andcome out as remorseful as I was that afternoon on the way home from MaryStarkweather's. 

A week or two later I happened to meet Richard Starkweather on thestreet in Hempfield. He was on his way home. 

"Yes, " he said, "we're in the old house again until spring, anyway. Ihaven't been so comfortable in a year. And, say, " here he looked at mequizzically, "Mary has joined the new cemetery association; you knowthey're trying to improve the resting places of the forefathers, and, byGeorge, if they didn't elect her chairman at the first meeting. She's awonder!"

CHAPTER XIII

HIS MAJESTY--BILL RICHARDS

Well, I have just been having an amusing and delightful adventure andhave come to know a Great Common Person. His name is Bill Richards, andhe is one of the hereditary monarchs of America. He belongs to ourruling dynasty. 

I first saw Bill about two weeks ago, and while I was stronglyinterested in him I had no idea, at the time, that I should ever come toknow him well. It was a fine June day, and I was riding on the newtrolley line that crosses the hills to Hewlett--a charming trip througha charming country--and there in the open car just in front of me satBill himself. One huge bare forearm rested on the back of the seat, therich red blood showing through the weathered brown of the skin. Hisclean brown neck rose strongly from the loose collar of his shirt, whichcovered but could not hide the powerful lines of his shoulders. He woreblue denim and khaki, and a small round felt hat tipped up jauntily atthe back. He had crisp, coarse light hair rather thin--not by age, butby nature--so that the ruddy scalp could be seen through it, and strongjaws and large firm features, and if the beard was two days old, hisface was so brown, so full of youthful health, that it gave no illimpression. 

He could not sit still for the very life that was in him. He seemed tohave some grand secret with the conductor and frequently looked aroundat him, his eyes full of careless laughter, and once or twice he calledout--some jocose remark. He helped the conductor, in pantomime, to pullthe cord and stop or start the car, and he watched with the liveliestinterest each passenger getting on or getting off. A rather mincingyoung girl with a flaring red ribbon at her throat was to him the finestcomedy in the world, so that he had to wink a telegram to the conductorabout her. An old woman with a basket of vegetables who delayed the carwas exquisitely funny. 

I set him down as being about twenty-two years old and some kind ofoutdoor workman, not a farmer. 

When he got off, which was before the car stopped, so that he had tojump and run with it, he gave a wild flourish with both arms, grimacedat the conductor, and went off down the road whistling for all he wasworth. How I enjoyed the sight of him! He was so charged with youthfulenergy, so overflowing with the joy of life, that he could scarcelycontain himself. What a fine place the world was to him! And whatcomical and interesting people it contained! I was sorry when he gotoff. 

Two or three days later I was on my way up the town road north of myfarm when I was astonished and delighted to see Bill for the secondtime. He was coming down the road pulling a wire over the crosspiece ofa tall telephone pole (the company is rebuilding and enlarging itssystem through our town). He was holding the wire close drawn over hisright shoulder, his strong hands gripped and pressed upon his breast. The veins stood out in his brown neck where the burlap shoulder pad hewore was drawn aside by the wire. He leaned forward, stepping first onhis toe, which he dug into the earth and then, heavily letting down hisheel, he drew the other foot forward somewhat stiffly. The muscles stoodout in his powerful shoulders and thighs. His legs were double-strappedwith climbing spurs. He was a master lineman. 

As I came alongside he turned a good-humoured sweaty face toward me. 

"It's dang hot, " said he. 

"It is, " said I. 

There is something indescribably fascinating about the sight of a strongworkman in the full swing of his work, something--yes, beautiful! Ahard pull of a job, with a strong man doing it joyfully, what could befiner to see? And he gave such a jaunty sense of youth and easystrength!

I watched him for some time, curiously interested, and thought I shouldlike well to know him, but could not see just how to go about it. 

The man astride the cross-arm who was heaving the wire forward from thespool on the distant truck suddenly cried out:

"Ease up there, Bill, she's caught. "

So Bill eased up and drew his arm across his dripping face. 

"How many wires are you putting up?" I asked, fencing for some opening. 

"Three, " said Bill. 

Before I could get in another stroke the man on the pole shouted:

"Let 'er go, Bill. " And Bill let 'er go, and buckled down again to hisjob. 

"Gee, but it's hot, " said he. 

In the country there are not so many people passing our way that wecannot be interested in all of them. That evening I could not helpthinking about Bill, the lineman, wondering where he came from, how hehappened to be what he was, who and what sort were the friends he made, and the nature of his ambitions, if he had any. Talk about going to theNorth Pole! It is not to be compared, for downright fascination, withthe exploration of an undiscovered human being. 

With that I began to think how I might get at Bill, the lineman, and notmerely weather talk, or wages talk, or work talk, but at Bill himself. He was a character quite unusual in our daily lives here in the country. I wondered what his interests could be, surely not mine nor Horace's northe Starkweathers'. As soon as I began trying to visualize what his lifemight be, I warmed up to a grand scheme of capturing him, if by chancehe was to be found the next day upon the town road. 

All this may seem rather absurd in the telling, but I found it adownright good adventure for a quiet evening, and fully believe I feltfor the moment like General Joffre planning to meet the Germans on theMarne. 

"I have it!" I said aloud. 

"You have what?" asked Harriet, somewhat startled. 

"The grandest piece of strategy ever devised in this town, " said I. 

With that I went delving in a volume of universal information I keepnear me, one of those knowing books that tells you how tall the greatPryamid is and why a hen cackles after laying an egg, and having foundwhat I wanted I asked Harriet if she could find a tape measure aroundthe place. She is a wonderful person and knows where everything is. Whenshe handed me the tape measure she asked me what in the world I was somysterious about. 

"Harriet, " I said, "I'm going on a great adventure. I'll tell you allabout it to-morrow. "

"Nonsense, " said Harriet. 

It is this way with the fancies of the evening--they often look flat andflabby and gray the next morning. Quite impossible! But if I'd acted onhalf the good and grand schemes I've had o' nights I might now be quitea remarkable person. 

I went about my work the next morning just as usual. I even avoidedlooking at the little roll of tape on the corner of the mantel as I wentout. It seemed a kind of badge of my absurdity. But about the middle ofthe fore-noon, while I was in my garden, I heard a tremendous racket upthe road. Rattle--bang, zip, toot! As I looked up I saw the bosslineman and his crew careering up the road in their truck, and the bolddriver was driving like Jehu, the son of Nimshi. And there were laddersand poles clattering out behind, and rolls of wire on upright spoolsrattling and flashing in the sunshine, and the men of the crew weresitting along the sides of the truck with hats off and hair flying asthey came bumping and bounding up the road. It was a brave thing to seegoing by on a spring morning!

As they passed, whom should I see but Bill himself, at the top of theload, with a broad smile on his face. When his eye fell on me he threwup one arm, and gave me the railroad salute. 

"Hey, there!" he shouted. 

"Hey there, yourself, " I shouted in return--and could not help it. 

I had a curious warm feeling of being taken along with that jolly crowdof workmen, with Bill on the top of the load. 

It was this that finished me. I hurried through an early dinner, andtaking the tape measure off the mantel I put it in my pocket as thoughit were a revolver or a bomb, and went off up the road feeling asadventurous as ever I felt in my life. I never said a word to Harrietbut disappeared quietly around the lilac bushes. I was going to waylaythat crew, and especially Bill. I hoped to catch them at their nooning. 

Well, I was lucky. About a quarter of a mile up the road, in a littlevalley near the far corner of Horace's farm, I found the truck, and Billjust getting out his dinner pail. It seems they had flipped pennies andBill hod been left behind with the truck and the tools while the otherswent down to the mill pond in the valley below. 

"How are you?" said I. 

"How are _you_?" said he. 

I could see that he was rather cross over having been left behind. 

"Fine day, " said I. 

"You bet, " said he. 

He got out his pail, which was a big one, and seated himself on theroadside, a grassy, comfortable spot near the brook which runs belowinto the pond. There were white birches and hemlocks on the hill, andsomewhere in the thicket I heard a wood thrush singing. 

"Did you ever see John L. Sullivan?" I asked. 

He glanced up at me quickly, but with new interest. 

"No, did you?"

"Or Bob Fitzsimmons?"

"Nope--but I was mighty near it once. I've seen 'em both in the movies. "

"Well, sir, " said I, "that's interesting. I should like to see themmyself. Do you know what made me speak of them?"

He had spread down a newspaper and was taking the luncheon out of his"bucket, " as he called it, including a large bottle of coffee; but hepaused and looked at me with keen interest. 

"Well, " said I, "when I saw you dragging that wire yesterday I took youto be a pretty husky citizen yourself. "

He grinned and took a big mouthful from one of his sandwiches. I couldsee that my shot had gone home. 

"So when I got back last night, " I said, "I looked up the armmeasurements of Sullivan and Fitzsimmons in a book I have and got towondering how they compared with mine and yours. They were considerablylarger than mine--"

Bill thought this a fine joke and laughed out in great good humour. 

"But I imagine you'd not be far behind either of them. "

He looked at me a little suspiciously, as if doubtful what I was drivingat or whether or not I was joking him. But I was as serious as the faceof nature; and proceeded at once to get out my tape measure. 

"I get very much interested in such things, " I said, "and I had enoughcuriosity to want to see how big your arm really was. "

He smiled broadly. 

"You're a queer one, " said he. 

But he took another bite of sandwich, and clenching his great fist drewup his forearm until the biceps muscles looked like a roll of Viennabread--except that they had the velvety gleam of life. So I measuredfirst one arm, then the other. 

"By George!" said I, "you're ahead of Fitzsimmons, but not quite up toSullivan. "

"Fitz wasn't a heavy man, " said Bill, "but a dead game fighter. "

I saw then that I had him! So I sat down on the grass near by and we hadgreat talk about the comparative merits of Fitzsimmons and Sullivan andCorbett and Jack Johnson, a department of knowledge in which heout-distanced me. He even told me of an exploit or two of his own, which showed that he was able to take care of himself. 

While we talked he ate his luncheon, and a downright gargantuan luncheonit was, backed by an appetite which if it were offered to the highestbidder on the New York Stock Exchange would, I am convinced, bring atleast ten thousand dollars in cash. It even made me envious. 

There were three huge corned-beef sandwiches, three hard-boiled eggs, apickle six inches long and fat to boot, four doughnuts so big that theyresembled pitching quoits, a bottle of coffee and milk, a quarter of apie, and, to cap the climax, an immense raw onion. It was worth a longjourney to see Bill eat that onion. He took out his clasp knife, andafter stripping off the papery outer shell, cut the onion into thickdewy slices. Then he opened one of the sandwiches and placed several ofthem on the beef, afterward sprinkling them with salt from a small paperparcel. Having restored the top slice of bread he took a moon-shapedbite out of one end of this glorified sandwich. 

"I like onions, " said he. 

When we first sat down he had offered to share his luncheon with me butI told him I had just been to dinner, and I observed that he had nodifficulty in taking care of every crumb in his "bucket. " It waswonderful to see. 

Having finished his luncheon he went down to the brook and got a drink, and then sat down comfortably with his back among the ferns of theroadside, crossed his legs, and lit his pipe. There was a healthy andwholesome flush in his face, and as he blew off the first cloud of smokehe drew a sigh of complete comfort and looked around at me with a lordlyair such as few monarchs, no matter how well fed, could have bettered. He had worked and sweat for what he got, and was now taking his ease inhis roadside inn. I wonder sometimes if anybody in the world experienceskeener joys than unwatched common people. 

How we talked! From pugilists we proceeded to telephones, and from thatto wages, hours, and strikes, and from that we leaped easily to Alaskaand gold-mining, and touched in passing upon Theodore Roosevelt. 

"I was just thinking, " I said, "that you and I can enjoy some thingsthat were beyond the reach of the greatest kings of the world. "

"How's that?" said he. 

"Why, Napoleon never saw a telephone nor talked through one. "

"That's so!" he laughed. 

"And Caesar couldn't have dreamed that such a thing as you are doing nowwas a possibility--nor George Washington, either. "

"Say, that's so. I never thought o' that. "

"Why, " I said, "the world is only half as big as it was before youfellows came along stringing your wires! I can get to town now from myfarm in two minutes, when it used to take me an hour. "

I really believe I gave him more of his own business than ever he hadbefore, for he listened so intently that his pipe went out. 

I found that Bill was from Ohio, and that he had been as far south asAtlanta and as far west as Denver. He got his three dollars and a half aday, rain or shine, and thought it wonderful pay; and besides, he wasseein' the country "free, gratis, fer nothing. "

He got his coat out of the truck and took from the pocket amany-coloured folder. 

"Say, Mister, have you ever been to the Northwest?"

"No, " said I. 

"Well, it's a great country, and I'm goin' up there. "

He spread out the glittering folder and placed his big forefinger on aspot about the size of Rhode Island somewhere this side of the Rockies. 

"How'll you do it?" I asked. 

"Oh, a lineman can go anywhere, " said he with a flourish, "A linemandon't have to beg a job. Besides, I got eighty dollars sewed up. "

Talk about freedom! Never have I got a clearer impression of it thanBill gave me that day. No millionaire, no potentate, could touch him. 

The crew came back all too soon for me. Bill knocked the ashes out ofhis pipe on his boot heel, and put his "bucket" back in the truck. Fiveminutes later he was climbing a tall pole with legs bowed out, strikingin his spikes at each step. From the cross-arm, up among the hemlocktops, he called out to me:

"Good-bye, pard. "

"Stop in, Bill, and see me when you come by my place, " said I. 

"You bet, " said he. 

And he did, the next day, and I showed him off to Harriet, who broughthim a plate of her best doughnuts and asked him about his mother. 

Yesterday I saw him again careering by in the truck. The job wasfinished. He waved his hand at me. 

"I'm off, " said he. 

"Where?" I shouted. 

"Canada. "

CHAPTER XIV

ON LIVING IN THE COUNTRY

"Why risk with men your hard won gold*?Buy grain and sow your Brother DustWill pay you back a hundred fold--The earth commits no breach of trust. "

_Hindu Proverb, Translated by Arthur Guiterman_. 

It is astonishing how many people there are in cities and towns who havea secret longing to get back into quiet country places, to own a bit ofthe soil of the earth, and to cultivate it. To some it appears as atroublesome malady only in spring and will be relieved by a whirl or twoin country roads, by a glimpse of the hills, or a day by the sea; but toothers the homesickness is deeper seated and will be quieted by no hastyvisits. These must actually go home. 

I have had, in recent years, many letters from friends asking aboutlife in the country, but the longer I remain here, the more I know aboutit, the less able I am to answer them--at least briefly. It is as thoughone should come and ask: "Is love worth trying?" or, "How aboutreligion?" For country life is to each human being a fresh, strange, original adventure. We enjoy it, or we do not enjoy it, or moreprobably, we do both. It is packed and crowded with the zest ofadventure, or it is dull and miserable. We may, if we are skilledenough, make our whole living from the land, or only a part of it, or wemay find in a few cherished acres the inspiration and power for otherwork, whatever it may be. There is many a man whose strength is renewedlike that of the wrestler of Irassa, every time his feet touch theearth. 

Of all places in the world where life can be lived to its fullest andfreest, where it can be met in its greatest variety and beauty, I amconvinced that there is none to equal the open country, or the countrytown. For all country people in these days may have the city--some cityor town not too far away: but there are millions of men and women inAmerica who have no country and no sense of the country. What do theynot lose out of life!

I know well the disadvantages charged against country life at its worst. At its worst there are long hours and much lonely labour and an incomepitifully small. Drudgery, yes, especially for the women, andloneliness. But where is there not drudgery when men are poor--wherelife is at its worst? I have never seen drudgery in the countrycomparable for a moment to the dreary and lonely drudgery of citytenements, city mills, factories, and sweat shops. And in recent yearsboth the drudgery and loneliness of country life have been disappearingbefore the motor and trolley car, the telephone, the rural post, thegasoline engine. I have seen a machine plant as many potatoes in one dayas a man, at hand work, could have planted in a week. While there is, indeed, real drudgery in the country, much that is looked upon asdrudgery by people who long for easy ways and a soft life, is only good, honest, wholesome hard work--the kind of work that makes for fiber in aman or in a nation, the kind that most city life in no wise provides. 

There are a thousand nuisances and annoyances that men must meet whocome face to face with nature itself. You have set out your upper acresto peach trees: and the deer come down from the hills at night and stripthe young foliage; or the field mice in winter, working under the snow, girdle and kill them. The season brings too much rain and the potatoesrot in the ground, the crows steal the corn, the bees swarm when no outis watching, the cow smothers her calf, the hens' eggs prove infertile, and a storm in a day ravages a crop that has been growing all summer. Aconstant warfare with insects and blights and fungi--a real, bitterwarfare, which can cease neither summer nor winter!

It is something to meet, year after year, the quiet implacability of theland. While it is patient, it never waits long for you. There is achosen time for planting, a time for cultivating, a time for harvesting. You accept the gauge thrown down--well and good, you shall have a chanceto fight! You do not accept it? There is no complaint. The landcheerfully springs up to wild yellow mustard and dandelion andpig-weed--and will be productive and beautiful in spite of you. 

Nor can you enter upon the full satisfaction of cultivating even a smallpiece of land at second hand. To be accepted as One Who Belongs, theremust be sweat and weariness. 

The other day I was digging with Dick in a ditch that is to run downthrough the orchard and connect finally with the land drain we put infour years ago. We laid the tile just in the gravel below the silt, about two feet deep, covering the openings with tar paper and thenthrowing in gravel. It was a bright, cool afternoon. In the field belowa ploughman was at work: I could see the furrows of the dark earthglisten as he turned it over. The grass in the meadow was a full richgreen, the new chickens were active in their yards, running to the cluckof the hens, already the leaves of the orchard trees showed green. Andas I worked there with Dick I had the curious deep feeling of comingsomehow into a new and more intimate possession of my own land. Fortitles do not really pass with signatures and red seals, nor with moneychanging from one hand to another, but for true possession one must workand serve according to the most ancient law. There is no mitigation andno haggling of price. Those who think they can win the greatest joys ofcountry life on any easier terms are mistaken. 

But if one has drained his land, and ploughed it, and fertilized it, and planted it and harvested it--even though it be only a few acres--how he comes to know and to love every rod of it. He knows the wetspots, and the stony spots, and the warmest and most fertile spots--until his acres have all the qualities of a personality, whose everycharacteristic he knows. It is so also that he comes to know his horsesand cattle and pigs and hens. It is a fine thing, on a warm day in earlyspring, to bring out the bee-hives and let the bees have their firstflight in the sunshine. What cleanly folk they are! And later to seethem coming in yellow all over with pollen from the willows! It is afine thing to watch the cherries and plum trees come into blossom, withus about the first of May, while all the remainder of the orchard seemsstill sleeping. It is a fine thing to see the cattle turned for thefirst time in spring into the green meadows. It is a fine thing--one ofthe finest of all--to see and smell the rain in a corn-field after weeksof drought. How it comes softly out of gray skies, the first dropsthrowing up spatters of dust and losing themselves in the dry soil. Thenthe clouds sweep forward up the valley, darkening the meadows andblotting out the hills, and then there is the whispering of the rain asit first sweeps across the corn-field. At once what a stir of life! Whatrustling of the long green leaves. What joyful shaking and swaying ofthe tassels! And have you watched how eagerly the grooved leaves catchthe early drops, and, lest there be too little rain after all, conductthem jealously down the stalks where they will soonest reach the thirstyroots? What a fine thing is this to see!

One who thus takes part in the whole process of the year comes soon tohave an indescribable affection for his land, his garden, his animals. There are thoughts of his in every tree: memories in every fence corner. Just now, the fourth of June, I walked down past my blackberry patch, now come gorgeously into full white bloom--and heavy with fragrance. Iset out these plants with my own hands, I have fed them, cultivatedthem, mulched them, pruned them, trellised them, and helped every yearto pick the berries. How could they be otherwise than full ofassociations! They bear a fruit more beautiful than can be found in anycatalogue: and stranger and wilder than in any learned botany book!

Why, one who comes thus to love a bit of countryside may enjoy it allthe year round. When he awakens in the middle of a long winter night hemay send his mind out to the snowy fields--I've done it a thousandtimes!--and visit each part in turn, stroll through the orchard and payhis respects to each tree--in a small orchard one comes to knowfamiliarly every tree as he knows his friends--stop at the strawberrybed, consider the grape trellises, feel himself opening the door of thewarm, dark stable and listening to the welcoming whicker of his horses, or visiting his cows, his pigs, his sheep, his hens, or so many of themas he may have. 

So much of the best in the world seems to have come fragrant out offields, gardens, and hillsides. So many truths spoken by the Master Poetcome to us exhaling the odours of the open country. His stories were sooften of sowers, husbandmen, herdsmen: his similes and illustrations sooften dealt with the common and familiar beauty of the fields. "Considerthe lilies how they grow. " It was on a hillside that he preached hisgreatest Sermon, and when in the last agony he sought a place to meethis God, where did he go but to a garden? A carpenter you say? Yes, butof this one may be sure: there were gardens and fields all about: heknew gardens, and cattle, and the simple processes of the land: he musthave worked in a garden and loved it well. 

A country life rather spoils one for the so-called luxuries. A farmer orgardener may indeed have a small cash income, but at least he eats atthe first table. He may have the sweetest of the milk, there arethousands, perhaps millions, of men and women in America who have neverin their lives tasted really sweet milk and the freshest of eggs, andthe ripest of fruit. One does not know how good strawberries orraspberries are when picked before breakfast and eaten with the dewstill on them. And while he must work and sweat for what he gets, he mayhave all these things in almost unmeasured abundance, and without athought of what they cost. A man from the country is often madeuncomfortable, upon visiting the city, to find two cans of sweet cornserved for twenty or thirty cents, or a dish of raspberries attwenty-five or forty--and neither, even at their best, equal in qualityto those he may have fresh from the garden every day. One need say thisin no boastful spirit, but as a simple statement of the fact: forfruits sent to the city are nearly always picked before they are fullyripe--and lose that last perfection of flavour which the sun and theopen air impart: and both fruits and vegetables, as well as milk andeggs, suffer more than most people think from handling and shipment. These things can be set down as one of the make-weights against thefamiliar presentation of the farmer's life as a hard one. 

One of the greatest curses of mill or factory work and with much citywork of all kinds, is its interminable monotony: the same processrepeated hour after hour and day after day. In the country there isindeed monotonous work but rarely monotony. No task continues very long:everything changes infinitely with the seasons. Processes are notrepetitive but creative. Nature hates monotony, is ever changing andrestless, brings up a storm to drive the haymakers from their hurriedwork in the fields, sends rain to stop the ploughing, or a frost tohurry the apple harvest. Everything is full of adventure andvicissitude! A man who has been a farmer for two hours at the mowingmust suddenly turn blacksmith when his machine breaks down and tinkerwith wrench and hammer; and later in the day he becomes dairyman, farrier, harness-maker, merchant. No kind of wheat but is grist to hismill, no knowledge that he cannot use! And who is freer to be a citizenthan he: freer to take his part in town meeting and serve his state insome one of the innumerable small offices which form the solid blocks oforganization beneath our commonwealth. 

I thought last fall that corn-husking came as near being monotonouswork, as any I had ever done in the country. I presume in the greatcorn-fields of the West, where the husking goes on for weeks at a time, it probably does grow really monotonous. But I soon found that there wasa curious counter-reward attending even a process as repetitive as this. 

I remember one afternoon in particular. It was brisk and cool withragged clouds like flung pennants in a poverty-stricken sky, and thehills were a hazy brown, rather sad to see, and in one of the appletrees at the edge of the meadow the crows were holding their mournfulautumn parliament. 

At such work as this one's mind often drops asleep, or at least goesdreaming, except for the narrow margin of awareness required for thesimple processes of the hands. Its orders have indeed been given: youmust kneel here, pull aside the stalks one by one, rip down the husks, and twist off the ear--and there is the pile for the stripped stalks, and here the basket for the gathered corn, and these processesinfinitely repeated. 

While all this is going on, the mind itself wanders off to its own farsweet pastures, upon its own dear adventures--or rests, or plays. It isin these times that most of the airy flying things of this beautifulworld come home to us--things that heavy-footed reason never quiteovertakes, nor stodgy knowledge ever knows. I think sometimes (as Sternesays) we thus intercept thoughts never intended for us at all, oruncover strange primitive memories of older times than these--racialmemories. 

At any rate, the hours pass and suddenly the mind comes home again, itcomes home from its wanderings refreshed, stimulated, happy. Andnowhere, whether in cities, or travelling in trains, or sailing upon thesea, have I so often felt this curious enrichment as I have upon thishillside, working alone in field, or garden, or orchard, It seems tocome up out of the soil, or respond to the touch of growing things. 

What makes any work interesting is the fact that one can makeexperiments, try new things, develop specialties and _grow_. And wherecan he do this with such success as on the land and in direct contactwith nature. The possibilities are here infinite new machinery, spraying, seed testing, fertilizers, experimentation with new varieties. A thousand and one methods, all creative, which may be tried out in thatgreat essential struggle of the farmer or gardener to command all theforces of nature. 

Because there are farmers, and many of them, who do not experiment anddo not grow, but make their occupation a veritable black drudgery, thisis no reason for painting a sombre-hued picture of country life. Anycalling, the law, the ministry, the medical profession, can be blastedby fixing one's eyes only upon its ugliest aspects. And farming, at itsbest, has become a highly scientific, extraordinarily absorbing, andwhen all is said, a profitable, profession. Neighbours of mine havedeveloped systems of overhead irrigation to make rain when there is norain, and have covered whole fields with cloth canopies to increase thewarmth and to protect the crops from wind and hail, and by the analysisof the soil and exact methods of feeding it with fertilizers, have comeas near a complete command of nature as any farmers in the world. Whatindependent, resourceful men they are! And many of them have also grownrich in money. It is not what nature does with a man that matters butwhat he does with nature. 

Nor is it necessary in these days for the farmer or the country dwellerto be uncultivated or uninterested in what are often called, with novery clear definition, the "finer things of life. " Many educated men arenow on the farms and have their books and magazines, and their music andlectures and dramas not too far off in the towns. A great change in thisrespect has come over American country life in twenty years. The realhardships of pioneering have passed away, and with good roads andmachinery, and telephones, and newspapers every day by rural post, thefarmer may maintain as close a touch with the best things the world hasto offer as any man. And if he really have such broader interests thewinter furnishes him time and leisure that no other class of people cancommand. 

I do not know, truly, what we are here for upon this wonderful andbeautiful earth, this incalculably interesting earth, unless it is tocrowd into a few short years--when all is said, terribly shortyears!--every possible fine experience and adventure: unless it is tolive our lives to the uttermost: unless it is to seize upon every freshimpression, develop every latent capacity: to grow as much as ever wehave it in our power to grow. What else can there be? If there is nolife beyond this one, we have lived _here_ to the uttermost. We've hadwhat we've had! But if there is more life, and still more life, beyondthis one, and above and under this one, and around and through this one, we shall be well prepared for that, whatever it may be. 

The real advantages of country life have come to be a strong lure tomany people in towns and cities: but no one should attempt to "go backto the land" with the idea that it is an easy way to escape the realproblems and difficulties of life. The fact is, there is no escape. Theproblems and the difficulties must be boldly met whether in city orcountry. Farming in these days is not "easy living, " but a highlyskilled profession, requiring much knowledge, and actual manual labourand plenty of it. So many come to the country too light-heartedly, buytoo much land, attempt unfamiliar crops, expect to hire the workdone--and soon find themselves facing discouragement and failure. Anycity man who would venture on this new way of life should try it firstfor a year or so before he commits himself--try himself out against theactual problems. Or, by moving to the country, still within reach of hisaccustomed work, he can have a garden or even a small farm to experimentwith. The shorter work-day has made this possible for a multitude ofwage-workers, and I know many instances in which life because of thisopportunity to get to the soil has become a very different and muchfiner thing for them. 

It is easy also for many men who are engaged in professional work tolive where they can get their hands into the soil for part of the timeat least: and this may be made as real an experience as far as it goesas though they owned wider acres and devoted their whole time to thework. 

A man who thus faces the problem squarely will soon see whether countrylife is the thing for him; if he finds it truly so, he can be as nearlyassured of "living happily ever after" as any one outside of astory-book can ever be. Out of it all is likely to come some of thegreatest rewards that men can know, a robust body, a healthy appetite, aserene and cheerful spirit!

And finally there is one advantage not so easy to express. Long ago Iread a story of Tolstoi's called "The Candle"--how a peasant Russianforced to plough on Easter Day lighted a candle to his Lord and kept itburning on his plough as he worked through the sacred day. When I see aman ploughing in his fields I often think of Tolstoi's peasant, andwonder if this is not as true a way as any of worshipping God. I wonderif any one truly worships God who sets about it with deliberation, orknows quite why he does it. 

"My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as showers upon the grass. "

THE END