THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 5 



out my knowledge ; and the springs gush, and die in 

 the flow of the tide, unknown to me. 



Again, it seemed that answer would come from 

 some remote valley side, away from the great high 

 ways of travel, where neither sail nor steamer ob 

 truded on the eye ; where indeed a sight of the sea 

 only came to one who climbed the tallest of the hills 

 which sheltered the valley. Half down the hills an 

 old farm house, with mossy porch, seemed to rest 

 upon a shelf of the land. A cackling, self-satisfied, 

 eager brood of fowls were in a party-colored cloud 

 about the big barn doors ; a burly mastiff loitered in 

 the sun by the house steps, mild-eyed cows were feed 

 ing beyond the pasture gate ; a brook that was half 

 a river, came sweeping down the meadows in full 

 sight curving and turning upon itself, and fretting 

 over bits of stony bottom, and loitering in deep 

 places under alluvial banks, where I knew trout must 

 lie then losing itself, upon the rim of the farm, in 

 tangled swamp lands ; where, in autumn, I knew, if the 

 farm should be mine, I could see the maples all turned 

 into feathery plumes of crimson. But I did not ; 

 plumes of crimson I see indeed each autumn, but 

 they are at my door ; and a great reach of water 

 comes streaming to my eye without lifting from my 

 chair- 

 It was not from mere caprice that my advertise- 



