I made no plans when I left home, I scarcely chose the direction in which I was to travel, but drifted out, as a boy might, into the great busy world.

Oh, I have dreamed of that! It seems almost as though, after ten years, I might again really touch the highest joys of adventure! So I took the Road as it came, as a man takes a woman, for better or worse--I took the Road, and the farms along it, and the sleepy little villages, and the streams from the hillsides--all with high enjoyment.
They were good coin in my purse! And when I had passed the narrow horizon of my acquaintanceship, and reached country new to me, it seemed as though every sense I had began to awaken.

I must have grown dull, unconsciously, in the last years there on my farm.

I cannot describe the eagerness of discovery I felt at climbing each new hill, nor the long breath I took at the top of it as I surveyed new stretches of pleasant countryside.
Assuredly this is one of the royal moments of all the year--fine, cool, sparkling spring weather.

I think I never saw the meadows richer and greener--and the lilacs are still blooming, and the catbirds and orioles are here.