It is not a discourse or a narrative we want as we walk abroad, but conversation.  Neither do we want people or facts or stories, but a person.  So I open one of these little books and read therein the thoughtful remark of a wise companion.  This I may reply to, or merely enjoy, as I please.  I am in no hurry, as I might be with a living companion, for my book friend, being long dead, is not impatient and gives me time to reply, and is not resentful if I make no reply at all.  Submitted to such a test as this few writers, old or new, give continued profit or delight.  To be considered in the presence of the great and simple things of nature, or worn long in the warm places of the spirit, a writer must have supreme qualities of sense or humour, a great sensitiveness to beauty, or a genuine love of goodness—­but above all he must somehow give us the flavour of personality.  He must be a true companion of the spirit.

* * * * *

There is an exercise given to young soldiers which consists in raising the hands slowly above the head, taking in a full breath at the same time, and then letting them down in such a way as to square the shoulders.  This leaves the body erect, the head high, the eyes straight ahead, the lungs full of good air.  It is the attitude that every man at arms should wish to take, After a day in the woods I feel some such erectness of spirit, a life of the head, and a clearer and calmer vision, for I have raised up my hands to the heavens, and drawn in the odours and sights and sounds of the good earth.

* * * * *

One of the great joys of such times of retirement perhaps the greatest of the joys is the return, freshened and sweetened, to the common life.  How good then appear the things of the garden and farm, the house and shop, that weariness had staled; how good the faces of friends.

CHAPTER VI

+No trespass+

I live in a country of beautiful hills, and in the last few years, since I have been here with Harriet, I have made familiar and pleasant acquaintance with several of them....

One hill I know is precious to me for a peculiar reason.  Upon the side of it, along the town road, are two or three old farms with lilacs like trees about their doorways, and ancient apple orchards with great gnarly branches, and one has an old garden of hollyhocks, larkspurs, zinnias, mignonette, and I know not how many other old-fashioned flowers.  Wild grapes there are along the neglected walls, and in a corner of one of them, by a brook, a mass of sweet currant which in blossom time makes all that bit of valley a bower of fragrance, I have gone that way often in spring for the sheer joy of the friendly odours I had across the ancient stone fences.