where formerly I had been able to live but once.

It was by this simple process of concentrating upon what I saw or heard
that I increased immeasurably my own joy of my garden and fields and
the hills and marshes all about. A little later, for I was a slow
learner, I began to practise the same method with the sense of smell,
and still later with the sense of taste. I said to myself, "I will no
longer permit the avid and eager eye to steal away my whole attention. I
will learn to enjoy more completely all the varied wonders of the
earth."

So I tried deliberately shutting the doorways of both sight and hearing,
and centring the industry of my spirit upon the flavours of the earth. I
tested each odour narrowly, compared it well with remembered odours, and
often turned the impression I had into such poor words as I could
command.

What a new and wonderful world opened to me then! My takings of nature
increased tenfold, a hundredfold, and I came to a new acquaintance with
my own garden, my own hills, and all the roads and fields around
about--and even the town took on strange new meanings for me. I cannot
explain it rightly, but it was as though I had found a new earth here
within the old one, but more spacious and beautiful than any I had known
before. I have thought, often and often, that this world we live in so
dumbly, so carelessly, would be more glorious than the tinsel heaven of
the poets if only we knew how to lay hold upon it, if only we could win
that complete command of our own lives which is the end of our being.

At first, as I said, I stopped my work, or loitered as I walked, in
order to see, or hear, or smell--and do so still, for I have entered