Usually I am an
active walker, loving the sense of quick motion and the stir it
imparts to both body and mind, but that morning I found myself
loitering, looking widely about me, and enjoying the lesser and
quieter aspects of nature. It was a fine wooded country in which
I found myself, and I soon struck off the beaten road and took to
the forest and the fields. In places the ground was almost
covered with meadow-rue, like green shadows on the hillsides, not
yet in seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long green grass of
the meadows shone the yellow star-flowers, and the sweet-flags
were blooming along the marshy edges of the ponds. The violets
had disappeared, but they were succeeded by wild geraniums and
rank-growing vetches.
I remember that I kept thinking from time to time, all the
forenoon, as my mind went back swiftly and warmly to the two fine
friends from whom I had so recently parted:
How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders
that. And two or three times I found myself in animated
conversations with them in which I generously supplied all three
parts. It may be true for some natures, as Leonardo said, that
"if you are alone you belong wholly to yourself; if you have a
companion, you belong only half to yourself"; but it is certainly
not so with me.
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