nward with a kind of crushing dignity.

I have laughed since when I have recalled the tone of his voice as he
said, "Look at the world!" Gloomy and black it was. It evidently made
him indignant to be here.

But at the moment his bitter query, the essential attitude of spirit
which lay behind it, struck into me with a poignancy that stopped me
where I stood. Was I, then, all wrong about the world? I actually had a
kind of fear lest when I should look up again I should find the earth
grown wan and bleak and unfriendly, so that I should no longer desire
it.

"Look at the world!" I said aloud.

And with that I suddenly looked all around me and it is a strange, deep
thing, as I have thought of it since, how the world came back upon me
with a kind of infinite, calm assurance, as beautiful as ever it was.
There were the hills and the fields and the great still trees--and the
open sky above. And even as I looked down the road and saw my sardonic
old friend plodding through the snow--his very back frowning--I had a
sense that he belonged in the picture, too--and couldn't help himself.
That he even had a kind of grace, and gave a human touch to that wintry
scene! He had probably said a great deal more than he meant!

_Look at the world_!

Well, look at it.

CHAPTER VIII

A GOOD APPLE

"I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible
goods."

I have just had one of the pleasant experiences of life. From time to
time, these brisk winter days, I like to walk across the fields to
Horace's farm. I take a new way each time and make nothing of the snow
in the fields or the drifts along the fences....

"Why," asks Harriet, "do you insist on struggling through the snow when
there's a good beaten road around?"

"Harriet," I said, "why should any one take a beaten road when there
are new and adventurous ways to travel?"

When I cross the fields I never know at what moment I may come upon some
strange or surprising experience, what new sights I may see, what new
sounds I may hear, and I have the further great advantage of appearing
unexpectedly at Horace's farm. Sometimes I enter by the cow lane,
sometimes by way of the old road through the wood-lot, or I appear
casually, like a gust of wind, around the corner of the barn, or I let
Horace discover me leaning with folded arms upon his cattle fence. I
have come to love doing this, for unexpectedness in visitors, as in
religion and politics, is disturbi