bright under their little bridges, I knew that I must soon step
aside and put down, if I could, some faint impression of the
feeling of this time and place. I cannot hope to convey any
adequate sense of it all--of the feeling of lightness, strength,
clearness, I have as I sit here under this maple tree--but I am
going to write as long as ever I am happy at it, and when I am no
longer happy at it, why, here at my very hand lies the pleasant
country road, stretching away toward newer hills and richer
scenes.

Until to-day I have not really been quite clear in my own mind as
to the step I have taken. My sober friend, have you ever tried to
do anything that the world at large considers not quite sensible,
not quite sane? Try it! It is easier to commit a thundering
crime. A friend of mine delights in walking to town bareheaded,
and I fully believe the neighbourhood is more disquieted thereby
than it would be if my friend came home drunken or failed to pay
his debts.

Here I am then, a farmer, forty miles from home in planting time,
taking his ease under a maple tree and writing in a little book
held on his knee! Is not that the height of absurdity? Of all my
friends the Scotch Preacher was the only one who seemed to
understand why it was that I must go away for a time. Oh, I am a
sinful and revolutionary person!

When I left home last week, if you could have had a truthful
picture of me--for is there not a photography so delicate that it
will catch the dim thought-shapes which attend upon our
lives?--if you could have had such a truthful picture of me, you