CHAPTER V.I PLAY THE PART OF A SPECTACLE PEDDLER.
Yesterday was exactly the sort of a day I love best--a spicy, unexpected, amusing day--crowned with a droll adventure.
I cannot account for it, but it seems to me I take the road each morning with a livelier mind and keener curiosity.

If you were to watch me narrowly these days you would see I am slowly shedding my years.

I suspect that some one of the clear hill streams from which I have been drinking (lying prone on my face) was in reality the fountain of eternal youth.

I shall not go back to see.
It seems to me, when I feel like this, that in every least thing upon the roadside, or upon the hill, lurks the stuff of adventure.

What a world it is! A mile south of here I shall find all that Stanley found in the jungles of Africa; a mile north I am Peary at the Pole! You there, brown-clad farmer on the tall seat of your wagon, driving townward with a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life--your life--is not all a gray smudge, as you think it is, but crammed, packed, loaded with miraculous things.