eace of fulfilment and the calm understanding of those
who look with clear eyes into another world.

Between midnight and dawn I fancy the pasture folk who are still
this side the pale get their farthest glimpse into the world which
lies beyond. The pasture on whose bosom they dwell sleeps deeply
then, its breathing not even faintly rustling the frost-browned
leaves of the white oaks, not even sighing those ancient,
druidical hymns through the pine tops. Sometimes as I stand with
them I try to feel this bosom rise and fall in the slow rhythm of
deep slumber, but even on such nights with the senses aquiver with
expectation of the unknown I fail. I dare say the fox that slips
along the winding paths at dawn and the little screech owl that
calls lonelily to his mate note without noticing these and many
other things in which our human perception fails. Man cultivates
his brains to the dulling of his senses and builds a wall of
useless possessions, attainments and entertainment about him till
he hears only a few things and sees but through tiny chinks like
the prisoner in a dungeon. Yet we are not altogether endungeoned.
We are beginning to know our danger and cry "back to the woods,"
which may yet be the slogan of our next emancipation. It is a long
path back for some of us and to cover it at a bound has its
dangers. The earthworm shrivels in the sudden sun and to leap from
the city block to the depths of the woods is to suffer from the
"growing pains" of awakening, atrophied senses. The half-way
ground is the pasture which once was the forest, which later was
man's, and where now nature and human-nature mingle in friendly
truce. In the depths of the woods the town draws me toward itself.
In the city I long for the woods, In the pasture is the smiling
truce of the two forces.

In the one I know best, as in most of our New England pastures,
the cattle have long ceased to browse and men came only because
nature draws them thither. The wild creatures seem to sense this
and to lose much of their woodland fear of me. Last night, in the
first promise of the gray of dawn a fox barked at my camp door,
scratching at the threshold as if he were the house dog, asking to
be let in out of the cold and lie at the fire. I heard the
barnyard roosters faintly crowing in the distance, but a little
screech owl called clearly on a limb just beyond the ridge-pole.
The roosters' cry had in it nothing but self-gratulatory bombast.
I know town