ealities of life. I have related
elsewhere how I thus came creeping like one sore wounded from the field
of battle, and how, among our hills, in the hard, steady labour in the
soil of the fields, with new and simple friends around me, I found a
sort of rebirth or resurrection. I that was worn out, bankrupt both
physically and morally, learned to live again. I have achieved something
of high happiness in these years, something I know of pure contentment;
and I have learned two or three deep and simple things about life: I
have learned that happiness is not to be had for the seeking, but comes
quietly to him who pauses at his difficult task and looks upward. I have
learned that friendship is very simple, and, more than all else, I have
learned the lesson of being quiet, of looking out across the meadows and
hills, and of trusting a little in God.

And now, for the moment, I am regaining another of the joys of
youth--that of the sense of perfect freedom. I made no plans when I
left home, I scarcely chose the direction in which I was to travel,
but drifted out, as a boy might, into the great busy world. Oh, I have
dreamed of that! It seems almost as though, after ten years, I might
again really touch the highest joys of adventure!

So I took the Road as it came, as a man takes a woman, for better or
worse--I took the Road, and the farms along it, and the sleepy little
villages, and the streams from the hillsides--all with high enjoyment.
They were good coin in my purse! And when I had passed the narrow
horizon of my acquaintanceship, and reached country new to me, it seemed
as though every sense I had began to awaken. I must have grown dull,
unconsciously, in the last years there on my farm. I cannot describe the
eagerness of discovery I felt at climbing each new hill, nor the long
breath I took at the top of it as I surveyed new stretches of pleasant
countryside.

Assuredly this is one of the royal moments of all the year--fine, cool,
sparkling spring weather. I think I never saw the meadows richer and
greener--and the lilacs are still blooming, and the catbirds and orioles
are here. The oaks are not yet in full leaf, but the maples have nearly
reached their full mantle of verdure--they are very beautiful and
charming to see.

It is curious how at this moment of the year all the world seems astir.
I suppose there is no moment in any of the seasons when the whole army
of agriculture, regulars and reserves, is so fully d