As I walked, Nature came and talked beside me, and showed me the world
and myself, and the ways of God seemed clearer.

It seemed to me a pity that all the beautiful and precious thoughts
and ideas that were crowding in upon me should be lost to my
fellow-men, and so I pitched my tent at a little cottage, and set to
work to write them down then and there as they came to me.

"It has been complained of me," I said to myself, "that I do not write
literary and high class work--at least, not work that is exceptionally
literary and high-class. This reproach shall be removed. I will
write an article that shall be a classic. I have worked for the
ordinary, every-day reader. It is right that I should do something
now to improve the literature of my beloved country."

And I wrote a grand essay--though I say it who should not, though I
don't see why I shouldn't--all about spring, and the way it made you
feel, and what it made you think. It was simply crowded with elevated
thoughts and high-class ideas and cultured wit, was that essay. There
was only one fault about that essay: it was too brilliant. I wanted
commonplace relief. It would have exhausted the average reader; so
much cleverness would have wearied him.

I wish I could remember some of the beautiful things in that essay,
and here set them down; because then you would be able to see what
they were like for yourselves, and that would be so much more simpler
than my explaining to you how beautiful they were. Unfortunately,
however, I cannot now call to mind any of them.

I was very proud of this essay, and when I got back to town I called