chimney; the smoke billows and waves to me, and I wave back.

The silky pallor of the morning refreshes me; in a long blue haze over the
forest, a slow dawn rises. It looks like a cheerful piratical coast in the
sky before me. The mountains are all on my left.

After a few hours' march I am like new from top to toe, and I press on
swiftly. I beat the air with my stick, and it says "hoo" as it swishes;
whenever I think I deserve it, I sit down and give myself food.

No, you have not my pleasures in the town.

I beat my legs with my stick from the sheer exuberance of living, and
nearly cry out. I behave as though the burden on my back had no weight,
taking needless leaps, and overexerting myself a little; but an
overexertion to which one is driven by inner content is easy to bear. In
my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy
and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding
unless someone explains it to you. I play a little game with myself,
pretending to have discovered a remarkable kind of tree. At first I pay
little attention, then I stretch my neck and contract my eyelids and gaze.


"What!" I say to myself. "Surely it couldn't be--"

I throw down my burden and approach, inspect the tree and nod sagely,
saying it is a strange, fabled tree that I have discovered. And I take out
my notebook and describe it.

Merely jest and happiness, a queer little impulse to play. Children have