Rosalind and I were entirely conscious of the transformation going on within us, and were not slow to submit ourselves to its beneficent influence.

We felt that Arden would not put all its resources into our hand until we had shaken off the dust and parted from the fret of the world we had left behind.
In those first inspiring days we went oftenest to the heart of the pines, where the moss grew so deep that our movements were noiseless; where the light fell in subdued and gentle tones among the closely clustered trees; and where no sound ever reached us save the organ music of the great boughs when the wind evoked their sublime harmonies.
Many a time, as we have sat silent while the tones of that majestic symphony rose and fell about us, we seemed to become a part of the scene itself; we felt the unfathomed depth of a music produced by no conscious thought, wrought out by no conscious toil, but akin, in its spontaneity and naturalness, with the fragrance of the flower.

And with these thrilling notes there came to us the thought of the calm, reposeful, irresistible growth of Nature; never hasting, never at rest; the silent spreading of the tree, the steady burning of the star, the noiseless flow of the river! Was not this sublime unconsciousness of time, this glorious appropriation of eternity, something we had missed all our lives, and, in missing it, had lost our birthright of quiet hours, calm thought, sweet fellowship, ripening character?
The fever and tumult of the world we had left were discords in a strain, that had never yielded its music before.
For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oars forsake.
After one of these long, delicious days in the heart of the pines, Rosalind slipped her hand in mine as we walked slowly homeward.
"This is the first day of my life," she said.
V And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
It was one of those entrancing mornings when the earth seems to have been made over under cover of night, and one drinks the first draught of a new experience when he sees it by the light of a new day.

Such mornings are not uncommon in Arden, where the nightly dews work a perpetual miracle of freshness.

On this particular morning we had strayed long and far, the silence and solitude of the woods luring us hour after hour with unspoken promises to the imagination.