THE WOODS.

I had seen and heard little of Hartman since our college days. There he
was counted a youth of eminent promise: after that I knew that he had
traveled, written something or other, and practised law--or professed
it, and not too eagerly: then he had disappeared. Last May I stumbled on
him in a secluded region where I had gone to fish and rest, after a year
of too close attention to business. We came face to face in the woods,
stared at each other, and then our hands met in the old grip. He took me
home with him, to a comfortable enough bachelor establishment, and we
made a night--or more than an evening--of it. He did not seem curious,
but I was.

"What have you been doing with yourself!" I began; "withdrawing from the
world?"

"To some extent," he said. "You can't do that entirely, you know. The
world is in you as well as around you, unluckily. It is too much with
us, as the poet observed. Do you remember the time you had in class over
that sonnet?"

"Pass that," I said. "I've given up poetry." ("I should have thought
that impossible," he put in, in his nasty nagging fashion; but I took no
notice.) "Where have you been all the time?"

"Here, mostly. It's not much of a place, but that is its merit."

He was getting too deep now, as he often did of old; so I said, "But
it's so far away."

"That's its other merit. You always had a direct and ingenuous mind,
Bob. Here you've hit both bull's-eyes in two shots."

"None of your chaff," said I. "Who do you practice your wits on, up
here?"

"My dogs. And there are some hens in the neighborhood, and a few small
farmers. Or if my bosom cries too loudly to be eased of its perilous
stuff, I can chaff myself, which is more profitable."

"You were always too clever for me. What else do you do?"

"As the Baroness used to say in _The Danicheffs_, in our days of vanity,
'Do you think that is much of a compliment?' I read, and fish, and
climb, and ride several hobbies, and meditate on Man, on Nature, and on
Human Fate."

"What's the good of that?" I was growing impatient of all this nonsense.

"Well, not much, perhaps," said he. "For you, very little indeed. But
intrinsically it is about as profitable as more popular avocations."

"Now look here, Hartman," I said. "You're a better man any day than
I--or you were. But here you are, hidden in the backwoods with owls (one
of them was making a horrid noise outside), and nothing to show. Now
I've got a wife--"