always a thing you would shrink from if you could; but how strongly
you shrink from it on a beautiful summer morning! On a gloomy
winter day you can walk with comparative willingness into your study
after breakfast, and spread out your paper, and begin to write your
sermon. For although writing the sermon is undoubtedly an effort;
and although all sustained effort partakes of the nature of pain;
and although pain can never be pleasant; still, after all, apart
from other reasons which impel you to your work, you cannot but
feel that really if you were to turn away from your task of writing,
there is nothing to which you could take that you would enjoy very
much more than itself. And even on the fairest summer morning, you
can, if you are living in town, take to your task with comparative
ease. Somehow, in town, the weather is farther off from you;
it does not pervade all the house, as it does in the country: you
have not windows that open into the garden: through which you see
green trees and grass every time you look up; and through which you
can in a minute, without the least change of dress, pass into the
verdant scene. There is all the difference in the world, between the
shadiest and greenest public garden or park even within a hundred
yards of your door; and the green shady little spot that comes up
to your very window. The former is no very great temptation to the
busy scholar of rural tastes; the latter is almost irresistible.
A hundred yards are a long way to go, with purpose prepense of
enjoying something so simple as the green earth. After having walked
even a hundred yards, you feel that you need a more definite aim.
And the grass and trees seem very far away, if you see them at the
end of a vista of washing your hands, and putting on another coat
and other boots, and still more of putting on gloves and a hat.
Give me the little patch of grass, the three or four shady trees,
the quiet corner of the shrubbery, that comes up to the study