geography without going to school, making a bold maneuver, like a 

 skillful general, and swinging back so far as to construct a huge penin- 

 sula, and within a three-feet of flowing back into itself, when in strange 

 willfulness turning off in a new direction to go clean to the back of the 

 hill, where the rocks jut out, laughs at them for being naked, and 

 chasing sunlight along its way and then drowsing within the shadows 

 (for the heat is too intense to enjoy long at a time), thus loitering, then 

 running off in great speed as if to do an errand forgotten, then off into 

 another direction out into the open where grass is growing and willows 

 dream; then down where the banks are high and steep, and where no 

 sunlight is, and then dodges like children when they play blindman's 

 buff: and the upshot of all this is the stream has written a poem of 

 journeys. 



Never walk across lots when a stream is in your neighborhood 

 (unless you are going on an errand for your wife. Then stay not on 

 the ordering of your going), but follow the stream as the sycamores 

 do. You shall find enchantment such as Merlin the mage knew not; 

 and you will be led afield where the voices will make you glad and 

 where every new step will be new delight, as with Merlin following 

 "The Gleam." 



144 



