166 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



as we pause at mid-stream to look left and right before 

 we pass on into the pleasant adventures that await. 

 Shall we not anticipate those adventures with a cer- 

 tain gravity, wondering whether, after all, the bridge 

 which takes us into realms unexplored can ever take us 

 out of ourselves, can lead us to sights which are not 

 already irrevocably conditioned by our personal vision, 

 can ever span the gulf between that self which alone we 

 may ever hope to know, and that not-our-self which 

 is all the world else? The reflection is melancholy, 

 and it would not do to dwell too long upon it, or else 

 the tramp-adventurer no less than Hamlet would 

 find his conscience "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 

 thought" till it lost the name of action. Yet for a 

 moment, however brief, it can hardly be escaped. 

 The road winds down the pleasant hills to the bridge, 

 and for a span it is isolated and alone as it crosses the 

 brown water to the unknown hills beyond, with vil- 

 lages in their green folds and vistas through their 

 intervales. On that isolated span the individual is 

 alone, as well. The whence and whither of his life 

 flashes its questioning beam upon him, perhaps the 

 primal allegory of the running river beneath his feet 

 murmurs sadly in the sound of the waters, and even his 

 companion seems suddenly strange he is conscious 

 of the sundering flood that rolls forever between per- 

 sonalities. 



But a hay cart rattles on the planking, the smell of the 



