goods."

I have just had one of the pleasant experiences of life. From time to
time, these brisk winter days, I like to walk across the fields to
Horace's farm. I take a new way each time and make nothing of the snow
in the fields or the drifts along the fences....

"Why," asks Harriet, "do you insist on struggling through the snow when
there's a good beaten road around?"

"Harriet," I said, "why should any one take a beaten road when there
are new and adventurous ways to travel?"

When I cross the fields I never know at what moment I may come upon some
strange or surprising experience, what new sights I may see, what new
sounds I may hear, and I have the further great advantage of appearing
unexpectedly at Horace's farm. Sometimes I enter by the cow lane,
sometimes by way of the old road through the wood-lot, or I appear
casually, like a gust of wind, around the corner of the barn, or I let
Horace discover me leaning with folded arms upon his cattle fence. I
have come to love doing this, for unexpectedness in visitors, as in
religion and politics, is disturbing to Horace and, as sand-grits in
oysters produce pearls, my unexpected appearances have more than once
astonished new thoughts in Horace, or yielded pearly bits of native
humour.

Ever since I have known him, Horace has been rather high-and-mighty with
me; but I know he enjoys my visits, for I give him always, I think, a
pleasantly renewed sense of his own superiority. When he sees me his eye
lights up with the comfortable knowledge that he can plough so much