"No," said I, "I'll tell it; if it means so much to me, it may
mean something to the friends who are following these lines."
For, after all, it is not what goes on outside of a man, the
clash and clatter of superficial events, that arouses our deepest
interest, but what goes on inside. Consider then that in this
narrative I shall open a little door in my heart and let you look
in, if you care to, upon the experiences of a day and a night in
which I was supremely happy.
If you had chanced to be passing, that crisp spring morning, you
would have seen a traveller on foot with a gray bag on his
shoulder, swinging along the country road; and you might have
been astonished to see him lift his hat at you and wish you a
good morning. You might have turned to look back at him, as you
passed, and found him turning also to look back at you--and
wishing he might know you. But you would not have known what he
was chanting under his breath as he tramped (how little we know
of a man by the shabby coat he wears), nor how keenly he was
enjoying the light airs and the warm sunshine of that fine spring
morning.
After leaving the hill farm he had walked five miles up the
valley, had crossed the ridge at a place called the Little Notch,
where all the world lay stretched before him like the open palm
of his hand, and had come thus to the boundaries of the
Undiscovered Country.
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