"The beech trees." said aloud, "have come at last to full leafage. The
wild blackberries are ready to bloom, the swamp roses are budded. Brown
planted fields I see, and drooping elms, and the young crows cry from
their nests on the knoll.... I know now that, whoever I am, whatever I
do, I am welcome here; the meadows are as green this spring for Tom the
drunkard, and for Jim the thief, as for Jonathan the parson, or for Walt
the poet: the wild cherry blooms as richly, and the odour of the pine is
as sweet--"

At that moment, like a flame for clearness, I understood some of the
deep and simple things of life, as that we are to be like the friendly
pines, and the elm trees, and the open fields, and reject no man and
judge no man. Once, a long time ago, I read a sober treatise by one who
tried to prove with elaborate knowledge that, upon the whole, good was
triumphant in this world, and that probably there was a God, and I
remember going out dully afterward upon the hill, for I was weighed down
with a strange depression, and the world seemed to me a hard, cold,
narrow place where good must be heavily demonstrated in books. And as I
sat there the evening fell, a star or two came out in the clear blue of
the sky, and suddenly it became all simple to me, so that I laughed
aloud at that laborious big-wig for spending so many futile years in
seeking doubtful proof of what he might have learned in one rare home
upon my hill. And far more than he could prove far more.

As I came away from that place I knew I should never again be quite the
same person I was before.



[Illustration: And as I sat there the evening fell, a star or two came