1899.] ESSAYS, 45 



In days past, it has often seemed to me a titting end to an 

 out-of-door tram[) to drop in upon one of our neighbors on my 

 way home. There was something about her that was akin to 

 sympathizing with the out-of-doors that made it a pleasing- 

 variation, yet an harmonious element, of my walk. 



She was of old New England stock and traditions ; a large 

 woman, over eighty, nearly helpless with rheumatism, and 

 nearly blind, so that her fiivorite seat was her arm-chair by her 

 south window. Her face was as placid, fair and smooth as a 

 girl's, and her brown hair as fresh above it. She had seen 

 al)Out as hard a life as any of us would care to face. Brought 

 u[) on a farm, she had lived to see mother, brothers, sisters, all 

 pass away ; the farm lost and her father alone left to her, 

 with nothing on which to live, except what they earned from 

 day to day. Her father lived to be over eighty, supported, in 

 part, by the town at the last. Then she came upon the town 

 entirely for support, although allowed to care for herself in two 

 rooms of the old house where they had lived for a number of 

 years. Think of it ! The last of all near relatives and friends, 

 eighty years of unremitting toil, which had yet not sufficed to 

 keep them from that which is so great a dread of all old- 

 fashioned New Englanders, "coming upon the town." And 

 yet this woman could say, " I have had a happy life !" 



Now, I am not so much a special pleader that I am going to 

 claim that this was all owing to love of nature : but I do think 

 it was largely owing to their enjoyment of their environment 

 (I say they, for both father and daughter were of much 

 the same nature and disposition) ; an enjoyment which they 

 got partly from peo[)le and partly from nature. Nature in the 

 wild, and nature cultivated — their garden, the round of farm 

 life in the neighborhood. Some of their knowledge was 

 tradition ; much, however, first hand, for they were good 

 observers, especially the father. They found nature immensely 

 interesting:. There was a zest in their life and interest in 

 things that I have not found in more favorably-placed people. 

 There was superstition in some of their beliefs ; to my more 

 modern scientitic way of looking at things, some unwarranted 



