can yield to its legal
owner is a living. But the real owner can gather from a field of
goldenrod, shining in the August sunlight, an unearned increment of
delight.

We measure success by accumulation. The measure is false. The true
measure is appreciation. He who loves most has most.

How foolishly we train ourselves for the work of life! We give our most
arduous and eager efforts to the cultivation of those faculties which
will serve us in the competitions of the forum and the market-place.
But if we were wise, we should care infinitely more for the unfolding of
those inward, secret, spiritual powers by which alone we can become
the owners of anything that is worth having. Surely God is the
great proprietor. Yet all His works He has given away. He holds no
title-deeds. The one thing that is His, is the perfect understanding,
the perfect joy, the perfect love, of all things that He has made. To
a share in this high ownership He welcomes all who are poor in spirit.
This is the earth which the meek inherit. This is the patrimony of the
saints in light.

"Come, laddie," I said to my comrade, "let us go home. You and I are
very rich. We own the mountains. But we can never sell them, and we
don't want to."

A LAZY, IDLE BROOK

"Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only
to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
And it is not by any means certain that a man's business is
the most important thing he has to do."

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: An Apology for Idlers.

I. A CASUAL INTRODUCTION

On the South Shore of Long Island, all things incline to a natural
somnolence. There are no ambitious mountains, no braggart cliffs, no
hasty torrents, no hustling waterfalls in that land,

"In which it seemeth always afternoon."

The salt meadows sleep in the summer sun; the farms and market-gardens
yield a placid harvest to a race of singularly unhurried tillers of the
soil; the low hills rise with gentle slopes, not caring to get too high
in the world, only far enough to catch a pleasant glimpse of the sea and
a breath of fresh air; the very trees grow leisurely, as if they felt
that they had "all the time there is." And from this dreamy land, close
as it lies to the unresting ocean, the tumult of the breakers and the
foam of ever-turning tides are shut off by the languid lagoons of the
Great South Bay and a long range of dunes, crested with wire