56 NEW HAMPSHIRE 



is a better one. So I felt for the time being, at 

 all events, falling in with the mood of the hour ; 

 for it is well that moods alter, as it is well that 

 the earth goes round the sun and season gives 

 place to season. Man was not made to see one 

 kind of beauty, or to believe in one kind of good- 

 ness. The whole world is hid in his heart. All 

 things are his. The small and the great, the near 

 and the far, light and darkness, good and evil, 

 the intimacies of home and the isolations of in- 

 finite space, all are parts of the Creator's work, 

 and equally parts of the creature's inheritance. 



For to-day, then, I praise the valley. I am for 

 having the hills close about me, rather than afar 

 off and far below. I like to see the trees, and the 

 leaves on them, rather than leagues on leagues 

 of barely discernible forest ; and a lonely pool of 

 still water at my feet, with alders reflected in it, 

 is more in my eyes than Lake TJmbagog itself, 

 hardly better than a blur upon the landscape, 

 fifty miles away. To-morrow I may feel differently, 

 but for to-day let me listen to the breeze in the 

 pine branches and the brook pattering over stones, 

 rather than to the eternal silences of the bare 

 mountain-top and the brooding sky. 



