I remembered, as I halted and so gazed north and south to the weald below me, and then again to the sea, the story of that Sultan who publicly proclaimed that he had possessed all power on earth, and had numbered on a tablet with his own hand each of his happy days, and had found them, when he came to die, to be seventeen.  I knew what that heathen had meant, and I looked into my heart as I remembered the story, but I came back from the examination satisfied, for “So far,” I said to myself, “this day is among my number, and the light is falling.  I will count it for one.”  It was then that I saw before me, going easily and slowly across the downs, the figure of a man.

He was powerful, full of health and easy; his clothes were rags; his face was open and bronzed.  I came at once off my horse to speak with him, and, holding my horse by the bridle, I led it forward till we met.  Then I asked him whither he was going, and whether, as I knew these open hills by heart, I could not help him on his way.

He answered me that he was in no need of help, for he was bound nowhere, but that he had come up off the high road on to the hills in order to get his pleasure and also to see what there was on the other side.  He said to me also, with evident enjoyment (and in the accent of a lettered man), “This is indeed a day to be alive!”

I saw that I had here some chance of an adventure, since it is not every day that one meets upon a lonely down a man of culture, in rags and happy.  I therefore took the bridle right off my horse and let him nibble, and I sat down on the bank of the Roman road holding the leather of the bridle in my hand, and wiping the bit with plucked grass.  The stranger sat down beside me, and drew from his pocket a piece of bread and a large onion.  We then talked of those things which should chiefly occupy mankind:  I mean, of happiness and of the destiny of the soul.  Upon these matters I found him to be exact, thoughtful, and just.

First, then, I said to him:  “I also have been full of gladness all this day, and, what is more, as I came up the hill from Waltham I was inspired to verse, and wrote it inside my mind, completing a passage I had been working at for two years, upon joy.  But it was easy for me to be happy, since I was on a horse and warm and well fed; yet even for me such days are capricious.  I have known but few in my life.  They are each of them distinct and clear, so rare are they, and (what is more) so different are they in their very quality from all other days.”

“You are right,” he said, “in this last phrase of yours....  They are indeed quite other from all the common days of our lives.  But you were wrong, I think, in saying that your horse and clothes and good feeding and the rest had to do with these curious intervals of content.  Wealth makes the run of our days somewhat more easy, poverty makes them more hard—­or very hard.  But no poverty has ever yet brought of itself despair into the soul—­the men who kill themselves are neither rich nor poor.  Still less has wealth ever purchased those peculiar hours.  I also am filled with their spirit to-day, and God knows,” said he, cutting his onion in two, so that it gave out a strong savour, “God knows I can purchase nothing.”