14 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
He cannot be diverted. But come to think on 
he has been a presiding elder, and such cannot 
be diverted. ‘They are brothers-in-law to the 
pole star. So we start. We are a company of 
three beside myself. They can outvote me. But 
one is a woman who cannot vote, but of what 
avail? I am still outvoted unless I stuff the 
ballot, which, being a minister, I cannot be 
brought to think of. Honesty is, as it were, 
hereditary with me. I shall be outvoted. Whether 
I favor the Washington’s Crossing or not, we 
shall as a party proclaim its worthiness. 
All this I foresee. But foreseeing the inevitable 
works no help. We will bear it whether we 
grin or not. But the New Jersey spring is in 
its first leaf. The branches are budded with 
greenery. The ravines along the road, each 
ravine going to Washington’s Crossing as I 
silently perceive, has its little whisper of glad- 
ness in the sun; and the trees which bear blossoms 
have them in perfume and plenty, and the sky 
has the indefinable witchery of the early day- 
time of the year, and the birds in the migration 
or occupation are having their way with the sky 
and the ground, and the sun, westering, has its 
gladdest wonder in its looks; and when then we 
have trotted on a while (but harken, did chariots 
trot? I profess me agnostic on this point in 
Latinity and have neither time nor mood to 
look it up), jogging on (for I am pretty certain 
chariots jogged along), we came in time to a hill- 
