TRAILING JUNIPER 



&quot; but it won t amount to much but wind. Why, 

 I remember when we were snowed in regularly 

 about this time o year, and it was generally a 

 week or more before we got the roads open through 

 the drifts. We allers looked for it as a winter s 

 holiday. Snow for Christmas was the reg lar 

 thing. Them was the times when this was a grass 

 country, and pasture-lands kind o took care of 

 themselves.&quot; 



What was it made me contemplate these homely 

 affairs with a complacency that was well, what 

 was it enervating or inspiring ? I do not exactly 

 know. But I was certainly at rest with myself, 

 if not absolutely at peace. Something assured me 

 that I had taken up a broken link and riveted it ; 

 and believe me, there is no achievement in this 

 life so profoundly satisfactory as the consciousness 

 of having retrieved something of being able to 

 stand with both feet in the inevitable and say, &quot; No 

 longer canst thou crush me, O ocean of the Great 

 Necessity, for I too, with my will, am one with 

 you.&quot; Then I would look at the round intent 

 face of the child who was my companion. He 

 would be eagerly poring over the books the Doctor 

 had sent him, and as I stretched invisible arms 

 across the table and enfolded him, without his 

 knowing it, I thought with a deep wondering 

 horror that a few months ago there was a great 

 gulf between us, and I with a drawn face and 

 blood-shot eyes was plunging with short breaths 

 and heavily burdened heart amid a sordid mob. 

 Scales on my eyes, forsooth. I must have been 



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