.

AN EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN NATURE.
In the early morning after I left the husky road-mender (wearing his new spectacles), I remained steadfastly on the Great Road or near it.

It was a prime spring day, just a little hazy, as though promising rain, but soft and warm.
"They will be working in the garden at home," I thought, "and there will be worlds of rhubarb and asparagus." Then I remembered how the morning sunshine would look on the little vine-clad back porch (reaching halfway up the weathered door) of my own house among the hills.
It was the first time since my pilgrimage began that I had thought with any emotion of my farm--or of Harriet.
And then the road claimed me again, and I began to look out for some further explanation of the curious sign, the single word "Rest," which had interested me so keenly on the preceding day.

It may seem absurd to some who read these lines--some practical people!--but I cannot convey the pleasure I had in the very elusiveness and mystery of the sign, nor how I wished I might at the next turn come upon the poet himself.

I decided that no one but a poet could have contented himself with a lyric in one word, unless it might have been a humourist, to whom sometimes a single small word is more blessed than all the verbal riches of Webster himself.