servants, it being left entirely to individual taste to decide what
"slight" shall be, and my neighbour really seems to enjoy using this
privilege, judging from the way she talks about it. I would give much
to be able to peep through a keyhole and see the dauntless little lady,
terrible in her wrath and dignity, standing on tiptoe to box the ears of
some great strapping girl big enough to eat her.

The making of cheese and butter and sausages _excellently_ well is a
work which requires brains, and is, to my thinking, a very admirable
form of activity, and entirely worthy of the attention of the
intelligent. That my neighbour is intelligent is at once made evident
by the bright alertness of her eyes--eyes that nothing escapes, and that
only gain in prettiness by being used to some good purpose. She is
a recognised authority for miles around on the mysteries of
sausage-making, the care of calves, and the slaughtering of swine; and
with all her manifold duties and daily prolonged absences from home, her
children are patterns of health and neatness, and of what dear little
German children, with white pigtails and fearless eyes and thick
legs, should be. Who shall say that such a life is sordid and dull and
unworthy of a high order of intelligence? I protest that to me it is
a beautiful life, full of wholesome outdoor work, and with no room for
those listless moments of depression and boredom, and of wondering what
you will do next, that leave wrinkles round a pretty woman's eyes,
and are not unknown even to the most brilliant. But while admiring my
neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my
talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather of
that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a
volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting
on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of
everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing
of the wind across the joyous fields. And it would make me perfectly
wretched to be confronted by ears so refractory as to require boxing.

Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these
occasions that I realise how absolutely alone each individual is, and
how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about
babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and
impassable distance that separates one