these upper glens of the world steep one in simplicity and childhood.

It was my delight to lie upon a bank of the road and to draw what I
saw before me, which was the tender stream of the Moselle slipping
through fields quite flat and even and undivided by fences; its banks
had here a strange effect of Nature copying man's art: they seemed a
park, and the river wound through it full of the positive innocence
that attaches to virgins: it nourished and was guarded by trees.

There was about that scene something of creation and of a beginning,
and as I drew it, it gave me like a gift the freshness of the first
experiences of living and filled me with remembered springs. I mused
upon the birth of rivers, and how they were persons and had a
name--were kings, and grew strong and ruled great countries, and how
at last they reached the sea.

But while I was thinking of these things, and seeing in my mind a kind
of picture of The River Valley, and of men clustering around their
home stream, and of its ultimate vast plains on either side, and of
the white line of the sea beyond all, a woman passed me. She was very
ugly, and was dressed in black. Her dress was stiff and shining, and,
as I imagined, valuable. She had in her hand a book known to the
French as 'The Roman Parishioner', which is a prayer-book. Her hair
was hidden in a stiff cap or bonnet; she walked rapidly, with her eyes
on the ground. When I saw this sight it reminded me suddenly, and I
cried out profanely, 'Devil take me! It is Corpus Christi, and my
third day out. It would be a wicked pilgrimage if I did not get Mass
at last.' For my first day (if you remember) I had slept in a wood
beyond Mass-time, and my second (if you remember) I had slept in a
bed. But this third day, a great Feast into the bargain, I was bound