on, with that passion for the sense of possession which
thrives best when the realities of possession are slipping away, has
posted all his fields with warnings against intrusion. You may not enter
this old field, nor walk by this brook, nor climb this hill, for all
this 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 had
often seen his signs, and always with a curious sense of the futility of
them. I did not need to enter his fields, nor climb his hill, nor walk
by his brook, but as the springs passed and the autumns whitened into
winter, I came into more and more complete possession of all those
fields that he so jealously posted. I looked with strange joy upon his
hill, saw April blossom in his orchard, and May colour the wild grape
leaves along his walls. June I smelled in the sweet vernal of his hay
fields, and from the October of his maples and beeches I gathered rich
crops and put up no hostile signs of ownership, paid no taxes, worried
over no mortgage, and often marvelled that he should be so poor within
his posted domain and I so rich without.

One who loves a hill, or a bit of valley, will experiment long until he
finds the best spot to take his joy of it; and this is no more than the
farmer himself does when he experiments year after year to find the best
acres for his potatoes, his corn, his oats, his hay. Intensive
cultivation is as important in these wider fields of the spirit as in
any other. If I consider the things that I hear and see and smell, and
the thoughts that go with them or grow out of them, as really valuable
possessions, contributing to the wealth of life, I cannot see why I
should not willingly give to them a tenth or a hundredth part of the
energy and thought I give to my potatoes or my blackberries or to the
writing I do.

I chose a place in a field just below Old Howieson's farm, where there
is a thorn-apple tree to sit or lie under. From the thorn-apple tree, by
turning my head in one direction, I can look up at the crown of the hill
with its green hood of oaks and maples and chestnuts, and high above it
I can see the clouds floating in the deep sky, or, if I turn my head the
other way, for I am a kind of monarch there on the hill and command the
world to delight me, I can look off across the pleasant valley with its
spreading fields and farmsteads set about with trees, and