We will begin from these convictions.
Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced, that our notes may
seem hardly more than breaths of common air, or draughts of water to
drink. But that is part of our lesson.
Dear, soothing, healthy, restoration-hours--after three confining
years of paralysis--after the long strain of the war, and its wounds
and death.
Note:
[9] Without apology for the abrupt change of field and
atmosphere--after what I have put in the preceding fifty or sixty
pages--temporary episodes, thank heaven!--I restore my book to the
bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only
permanent reliance for sanity of book or human life.
Who knows, (I have it in my fancy, my ambition,) but the pages now
ensuing may carry ray of sun, or smell of grass or corn, or call of
bird, or gleam of stars by night, or snow-flakes falling fresh
and mystic, to denizen of heated city house, or tired workman or
workwoman?--or may-be in sick-room or prison--to serve as cooling
breeze, or Nature's aroma, to some fever'd mouth or latent pulse.
ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE
As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-lane fenced
by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copious
weeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick' d
stones at the fence bases--irregular paths worn between, and horse and
cow tracks--all characteristic accompaniments marking and scenting
the neighborhood in their seasons--apple-tree blossoms in forward
April--pigs, poultry, a field of August buckwheat, and in another the
long flapping tassels of maize--and so to the pond, the expansion of
the creek, the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and such
recesses and vistas.
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