IV 

 FIELDS 



A MAN will tell you how he has walked to such and such 

 a place "across the fields," with an air of saying, 

 " You, I suppose, not knowing the country, painfully 

 pursue the highroad." He has the look of one who 

 has made the discovery that it is good and wise to 

 leave the beaten track, the cart rut, and the plain 

 and obvious road, and has adventured in a daring 

 spirit from stile to stile, from gate to ditch, where only 

 the knowing ones may go. He is generally so occupied 

 in the pride of reaching his destination by these means, 

 that he has had little time to look about him and enjoy 

 the expanse of country. For all that, he is a man 

 after my own heart for, in a sense, he becomes part 

 owner of England with me as soon as he puts his leg 

 across a stile and begins to cast an eye across country. 



There is an extraordinary satisfaction in following 

 a footpath, that is made doubly sweet if one sucks in 

 the joy of the day, and the blitheness of that through 

 which we pass. To be knee-high in a bean field in 

 flower is as good a thing as I know, more especially 

 if it be on a hillside overlooking the sea. 



I sat once on the polished rail of a stile (very well 

 made with cross arms to hold by, like two short step- 

 ladders, each with one long arm) and looked at a path 

 I had taken that lay through a field of whispering oats. 

 They seemed to hold a thousand secrets that they passed 



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