I love to think of people all around going out busily in the morning to their work and returning at night, weary, to rest.

I like to think of them growing up, growing old, loving, achieving, sinning, failing--in short, living.
In such a live-minded mood as this it often happens that the most ordinary things appear charged with new significance.

I suppose I had seen a thousand rural-mail boxes along country roads before that day, but I had seen them as the young farmer saw the sign-man.

They were mere inert objects of iron and wood.
But as I tramped, thinking of the people in the hills, I came quite unexpectedly upon a sandy by-road that came out through a thicket of scrub oaks and hazel-brush, like some shy countryman, to join the turn-pike.

As I stood looking into it--for it seemed peculiarly inviting--I saw at the entrance a familiar group of rural-mail boxes.
And I saw them not as dead things, but for the moment--the illusion was over-powering--they were living, eager hands outstretched to the passing throng I could feel, hear, see the farmers up there in the hills reaching out to me, to all the world, for a thousand inexpressible things, for more life, more companionship, more comforts, more money.
It occurred to me at that moment, whimsically and yet somehow seriously, that I might respond to the appeal of the shy country road and the outstretched hands.