A GARDEN DIARY 123 
able terms, seeing that the majority of the hard- 
workers of the world are, and as a necessity 
always will be, obscure. It is only in our little 
fussy artistic or literary coteries that the two ideas 
have attained to a sort of accidental connection. 
Personally I have a relish, I might almost say 
a passion for obscurity. The retort is of course 
easy, and I am able to reply to myself that 
the alternative has never been pressed upon my 
attention with any very urgent insistence. That 
is true, but does not really affect the matter. 
Honestly, I do regard obscurity as a blessing, 
apart from such satisfactions it may provide for 
laziness. For what does it mean? It means 
that you belong to yourself; that you have your 
years, your days, hours, and minutes undisposed 
of, unbargained for, unwatched, and unwished 
for by anybody. It means that you are free 
to go in and out without witnesses; free as 
the grass, free rather as the birds of the air. 
Further, I am inclined to think that only 
Obscurity can properly and heartily enjoy his 
sunsets, moon-rises, spring mornings, running 
streams, first flowers, and all the rest of the good 
cheap joys that lie about his path. The known 
and admired person is expected to make capital 
out of such matters, and he probably does so too, 
poor fellow! Yet upon the untrammelled enjoy- 
ment of such things how much, not only of the 
satisfaction, but of the peace of life depends? 
