ehow we always turn to the East
in our best moments and it was so this day.... We were directed to the
house of a man who owned two little cottages just a mile from town. He
was not well that day, but his boy went with us to show the cottages.
That boy you shall be glad to know.

We walked together down the long lane, and I did not seem able to reach
our guide's heart, so we were silent, but Penelope came between us. He
would have been strange, indeed, had she failed.... I look back now
from where I sit--to that long lane. I love it very much for it led to
the very edge of a willowed bluff--to the end of the land. Erie brimmed
before us. It led to a new life, too.

I had always disliked Erie--as one who lived in the Lake Country and
chose his own. I approved mildly of St. Claire; Michigan awed me from a
little boy's summer; Huron was familiar from another summer, but Erie
heretofore had meant only something to be crossed--something shallow and
petulant. Here she lay in the sunlight, with bars of orange light
darkening to ocean blue, and one far sparkling line in the West. Then I
knew that I had wronged her. She seemed not to mind, but leisurely to
wait. We faced the South from the bluffs, and I thought of the stars
from this vantage.... If a man built his house here, he could explain
where he lived by the nearest map in a Japanese house, or in a Russian
peasant's house, for Erie to them is as clear a name as Baikal or the
Inland Sea is to us. I had heard Japanese children repeat the names of
the Great Lakes. When you come to a shore like this you are at the end
of the landscape. You must pause. Somehow I think--we are pausing still.
One must pause to project a dream.

... For weeks there, in a little rented place, we were so happy that we
hardly ventured to speak of it. We had expected so little, and had
brought such weariness. Day after day unfolded in the very fulness of
life, and the small flower-beds there on the stranger's land held the
cosmic answer. All that summer Jupiter marked time across the southern
heavens; and I shall never forget the sense of conquest in hiving the
first swarm of bees. They had to be carried on a branch down a deep
gulley, and several hundred feet beyond. Two-thirds of the huge cluster
were in the air about me, before the super was lifted. Yet there was not
a sting from the tens of thousands. We had the true thirst that year.
Little things were enough; we were innocent, even of possessi