128 UNDER THE TREES. 



one finds society enough to take away the sense of 

 isolation, but not enough to destroy the sweetness 

 of solitude ; it was rather that the few we met made 

 us feel at once that we had equal claim with them 

 selves on the hospitality of the place. The Forest 

 was not only free to every comer, but it evidently 

 gave peculiar pleasure to those who were living in 

 it to convey a sense of ownership to those who were 

 arriving for the first time. Rosalind declared that 

 she felt as much at home as if she had been born there; 

 and she added that she was glad she had brought 

 only the dress she wore. I was a little puzzled 

 by the last remark ; it seemed not entirely logical. 

 But I saw presently that she was expressing the 

 fellowship of the place which forbade that one 

 should possess anything that was not in use, and 

 that, therefore, was not adding constantly to the 

 common stock of pleasure. Concerning the feel 

 ing of having been born in Arden, I became con 

 vinced later that there was good reason for believ 

 ing that everybody who loved the place had been 

 born there, and that this fact explained the home 

 feeling which came to one the instant he set foot 

 within the Forest. It is, in fact, the only place I 

 have known which seemed to belong to me and to 

 everybody else at the same time ; in which I felt 

 no alien influence. In our own home I had some 

 thing of the same feeling, but when I looked from 

 a window or set foot from a door I was instantly 

 oppressed with a sense of foreign ownership. In 



