He had been for days troubled with the deep
problems of other people, and it seemed to him this morning as
though a great stone had been rolled from the door of his heart,
and that he was entering upon a new world--a wonderful, high,
free world. And, as he tramped, certain lines of a stanza long
ago caught up in his memory from some forgotten page came up to
his lips, and these were the words (you did not know as you
passed) that he was chanting under his breath as he tramped, for
they seem charged with the spirit of the hour:
I've bartered my sheets for a starlit bed;
I've traded my meat for a crust of bread;
I've changed my book for a sapling cane,
And I'm off to the end of the world again.
In the Undiscovered Country that morning it was wonderful how
fresh the spring woods were, and how the birds sang in the trees,
and how the brook sparkled and murmured at the roadside. The
recent rain had washed the atmosphere until it was as clear and
sparkling and heady as new wine, and the footing was firm and
hard. As one tramped he could scarcely keep from singing or
shouting aloud for the very joy of the day.
"I think," I said to myself, "I've never been in a better
country," and it did not seem to me I cared to know where the
gray road ran, nor how far away the blue hills were.
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