I remember how eagerly I looked out across
the fields and meadows and rested my eyes upon the distant hills.
How roomy it all was! I looked up into the clear blue of the sky.
There was space here to breathe, and distances in which the
spirit might spread its wings. As the old prophet says, it was a
place where a man might be placed alone in the midst of the
earth.
I was strangely glad that morning of every little stream that ran
under the bridges, I was glad of the trees I passed, glad of
every bird and squirrel in the branches, glad of the cattle
grazing in the fields, glad of the jolly boys I saw on their way
to school with their dinner pails, glad of the bluff, red-faced
teamster I met, and of the snug farmer who waved his hand at me
and wished me a friendly good morning. It seemed to me that I
liked every one I saw, and that every one liked me.
So I walked onward that morning, nor ever have had such a sense
of relief and escape, nor ever such a feeling of gayety.
"Here is where I belong," I said. "This is my own country. Those
hills are mine, and all the fields, and the trees and the sky--
and the road here belongs to me as much as it does to any one."
Coming presently to a small house near the side of the road, I
saw a woman working with a trowel in her sunny garden.
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