oaks. And from all the tramp and bustle of the world into which fortune
has led me in these latter years of my life, I delight to steal away for
days, and for weeks together, and bathe my spirit in the freedom of the
old woods; and to grow young again, lying upon the brook-side, and
counting the white clouds that sail along the sky softly and
tranquilly--even as holy memories go stealing over the vault of life.

I am deeply thankful that I could never find it in my heart so to
pervert truth as to call the smart villages with the tricksy shadow of
their maple avenues--the Country.

I love these in their way, and can recall pleasant passages of thought,
as I have idled through the Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the
inn-door of some quiet New-England village. But I love far better to
leave them behind me, and to dash boldly out to where some out-lying
farm-house sits--like a sentinel--under the shelter of wooded hills, or
nestles in the lap of a noiseless valley.

In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as it may be with the
shadows of trees, you cannot forget--men. Their voice, and strife, and
ambition come to your eye in the painted paling, in the swinging
signboard of the tavern, and--worst of all--in the trim-printed
"ATTORNEY AT LAW." Even the little milliner's shop, with its
meagre show of leghorns, and its string across the window all hung with
tabs and with cloth roses, is a sad epitome of the great and
conventional life of a city neighborhood.

I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of them this midsummer's day.
I like to steep my soul in a sea of quiet, with nothing floating past
me, as I lie moored to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, and