154 A SENSE OF ELATION 



get round these thickets, fearing that if I varied the 

 least bit from the bee-Hne I was making I might 

 lose the sense of direction that guided me. I must, 

 I felt, keep the line. Eventually I got free of the 

 wood, and coming into an open space I dimly dis- 

 cerned a dwarf tree with a stout malformed trunk 

 which I recognised as one of my landmarks on the 

 borders of the wood, and there saw that I was actually 

 making a bee-line for my destination. Now I knew 

 where I was, and remembered that another smaller 

 wood lay before me; then a mile or so of open grass- 

 land to the lonely farmhouse I was making for. 



The feeling I had experienced on that one occasion, 

 from the moment it came to me in the depths of that 

 dark wood that I knew my way, was one of intense 

 elation: it affected me like the recovery of something 

 infinitely precious, so long lost that I had been with- 

 out hope of ever finding it again; and it was like the 

 recovery of sight to a blind man; or like that "vision 

 of Paradise" which a temporary recovery of the sense 

 of smell had seemed to Wordsworth as he sat in a 

 garden full of flowers ; or like the recovery of memory 

 in one who had lost that faculty. And this elation 

 lasted until I recognised the landmark, the deformed 

 tree, and began to memorise the wood that yet 

 remained to be got through and the open ground 

 beyond it. Memory and thinking took the place of 

 something which had been like an inspiration, an 

 intuition, and had a sobering effect. I had to rely 

 on my memory and reasoning faculties now. 



It was a strange experience — perhaps the strangest 



