Peripatetic Meditations 



Nature deals directly with us and some of her 

 gifts are beyond human power to transmit. No 

 page can be printed which can do more than 

 urge the reader to seek for himself. Take the 

 world only on hearsay and you are a stranger 

 in it for the term of your natural life. 



I do not know when the mill-pond was estab- 

 lished. It was certainly as long ago as the 

 closing decade of the eighteenth century. It is 

 sufficient for my purpose that it has been a pond 

 since I first passed this way, and that was long 

 before I was allowed to come alone. Every 

 man has his individual "long ago" when the 

 world meant so much that failed us as the years 

 rolled by. A country mill-pond, a boy fishing, 

 sunshine, song-birds, perhaps a boat — a pic- 

 ture, this, of an Elysian field that age can see 

 only when blinded to the facts. But this is a 

 May day. Fit for meditation and not for mel- 

 ancholy. The latter, if it shows itself at such 

 a time, is a mis-fit. May melancholy ! As well 

 speak of a righteous sinner! 



Here I am, but not as I have often been be- 

 fore, walking on the dry bed of the old mill- 

 pond. The past is not always so hopelessly 



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