A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



a combination of Hypatia and Maintenon that I 

 might fall in love with it, and I was paralyzed by 

 a rustic handmaiden. I had believed that an in 

 tellect like mine would assert its mastership of the 

 world, and a yellow dog wagged his tail at me with 

 esoteric authority. As for the Florentine maid 

 who came regularly and beamed round us, I am 

 bound to say now that she was the sunshine of 

 many rainy hours and left layers of impalpable 

 light in our recollections. It was providentially 

 ordered that she should drop out of the clouds, 

 as it were, without any prevision on our part. If 

 I had offered to pay her for her services, she would 

 have vanished offended. It was a neighbourly 

 arrangement, unmarred by any contracts. She 

 could just as well as not run over and look after 

 things ; &quot; a child like that should not be left alone 

 in the woods,&quot; she said ; so I agreed that she 

 should keep one eye on Charlie. I say one eye, 

 because even while I made the proposition there 

 was a non-committal twinkle in the other. 



There is not a blase man living who has not a 

 niche in his constitution for a Gretchen, and there 

 is not a Gretchen who will not come some time, 

 like a song sparrow, and twitter in it, to fly away 

 again when she gets through. This circumam 

 bient freshness had begun to build a nest in my 

 heart before I knew it. I don t believe she knew 

 it herself. It was a general instinct of nidification 

 on her part, and I suppose that such nests began 

 to take form wherever she lit. It is worth men 

 tioning because it was part of the resurgence of 



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