my planting, with my feet upon the earth, I am
invincible and unconquerable. Hercules himself, though he comes upon me
in the guise of Riches, or Fame, or Power, cannot overthrow me--save as
he takes me away from this soil. For at each step my strength is
renewed. I forget weariness, old age has no dread for me.

Some there may be who think I talk dreams; they do not know reality. My
friend, did it ever occur to you that you are unhappy because you have
lost connection with life? Because your feet are not somewhere firm
planted upon the soil of reality? Contentment, and indeed usefulness,
comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great
humilities--of not trying to make ourselves this or that (to conform to
some dramatized version of ourselves), but of surrendering ourselves to
the fullness of life--of letting life flow through us. To be used!--that
is the sublimest thing we know.

It is a distinguishing mark of greatness that it has a tremendous hold
upon real things. I have seen men who seemed to have behind them, or
rather within them, whole societies, states, institutions: how they
come at us, like Atlas bearing the world! For they act not with their
own feebleness, but with a strength as of the Whole of Life. They speak,
and the words are theirs, but the voice is the Voice of Mankind.

I don't know what to call it: being right with God or right with life.
It is strangely the same thing; and God is not particular as to the name
we know him by, so long as we know Him. Musing upon these secret things,
I seem to understand what the theologians in their darkness have made so
obscure. Is it not just this at-one-moment with life which sweetens and
saves us all?

In all these writings I have glorified the life of the soil until I am
ashamed. I have loved it because it saved me. The farm for me, I decided
long ago, is the only place where I can flow strongly and surely. But to
you, my friend, life may present a wholly different aspect, variant
necessities. Knowing what I have experienced in the city, I have
sometimes wondered at the happy (even serene) faces I have seen in
crowded streets. There must be, I admit, those who can flow and be at
one with that life, too. And let them handle their money, and make
shoes, and sew garments, and write in ledgers--if that completes and
contents them. I have no quarrel with any one of them. It is, after all,
a big and various world, where men can be happy in many ways.