pe, who such a little while ago was running
care-free and happy-hearted in the sun, bade us good-by and sailed
away--sailed back across the ocean to France, an enlisted soldier, to do
her part where the world's bravest were battling for the world's
freedom.

For us, indeed, the world had changed; we had little need any more for
the old house that on a July day twelve years before we had found and
made our home. It had seen our brief generation pass; it was ready for
the next. And when, one day, there came a young man and his bride, just
starting on the way we had come, and seeing the beauty of the spot, just
as we had seen it, wanted to own and enjoy it, just as we had owned and
enjoyed it, we yielded it to them gladly, even if sorrowfully, for one
must give up everything, some time or other, and it is an economy of
regret to give to the right person, at the right time.

And now just here I want to record a curious thing. Earlier in these
pages I have spoken of planting one year some white canterbury-bells
that did not grow, or at least, so far as we could discover, did not
bloom. In six seasons we never saw any sign of them, yet on the day we
were leaving our house, closing it for the last time, I found on the
spot where they had been planted, in full bloom, a stalk of white
canterbury-bells! Had the seed germinated after all those years? Was it
the spirit of our garden, sprung up there to tell us good-by? Who can
answer?

[Illustration]

Our abandoned farm is no longer ours. We, too, have abandoned it. Only
the years that we spent there remain to us--a tender and beautiful
memory. Whatever there was of shadow or misfortune has long since
passed, by. I see now all our summers there bathed in mellow sunlight,
all the autumns aglow with red and gold, all the winters clean with
sparkling snow, all the springs green with breaking buds and white with
bloom. If those seasons were not flawless at the time, they have become
so, now when they are added to the past.

And I know that they were indeed happy, for they make my heart ache
remembering, and it is happiness, and not misery, that makes the heart
ache--when it is gone.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DWELLERS IN ARCADY***

******* This file should be named 28027.txt or 28027.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/0/2/28027

Updated editions will replace the previous on