I started, as
all sensitive and pleasure-loving natures do, with an expectation
of finding life a much more exciting, amusing, and delightful thing
than I have found it. I desired to skip from peak to peak, without
troubling to descend into the valleys. But now that I have
descended, partly out of curiosity and partly out of inefficiency,
no doubt, into the low-lying vales, I have found them to be
beautiful and interesting places, the hedgerows full of flower and
leaf, the thickets musical with the voices of birds, the orchards
loaded with fruit, the friendly homesteads rich with tranquil life
and abounding in quiet friendly people; and then the very peaks
themselves, past which my way occasionally conducts me, have a
beautiful solemnity of pure outline and strong upliftedness, seen
from below, which I think they tend to lose, seen from the summit;
and if I have spoken of the quieter joys, it is--I can say this
with perfect honesty--because I have been pleased with them, as a
bird is pleased with the sunshine and the berries, and sings, not
that the passers-by may admire his notes, but out of simple joy of
heart; and, after all, it is enough justification, if a pilgrim or
two have stopped upon their way to listen with a smile.
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