als with us on the principles of immutable
righteousness; she treats us as her equals, and demands from us an
equivalent for every gift or grace of sight or sound she bestows. She
rejects contemptuously the advances of the weaklings who aspire to
become her beneficiaries without having made good their claim by some
service or self-denial; she rewards those only who, like herself, find
music in the tempest as well as in the summer wind; joy in arduous
service as well as in careless ease. A world in which there were no
labours to be accomplished, no burdens to be borne, no storms to be
endured, would be a world without true joy, honest pleasure, or noble
aspiration. It would be a fool's paradise.

The Forest of Arden is not without its changes of weather and season.
Rosalind and I had fancied that it was always summer there, and that
sunlight reigned from year's end to year's end; if we had been told
that storms sometimes over-shadowed it, and that the icy fang of winter
is felt there, we should have doubted the report. We had a good deal
to learn when we first went to Arden; in fact, we still have a great
deal to learn about this wonderful country, in which so many of the
ideals and standards with which we were once familiar are reversed. It
is one of the blessed results of living in the Forest that one is more
and more conscious that he does not know and more and more eager to
learn. There are no shams of any sort in Arden, and all pride in
concealing one's ignorance disappears; one's chief concern is to be
known precisely as he is. We were a little sensitive at first, a
little disposed to be cautious about asking questions that might reveal
our ignorance; but we speedily lost the false shame we had brought with
us from a world where men study to conceal, as a means of protecting,
the things that are most precious to them. When we learned that in the
Forest nobody vulgarises one's affairs by making them matter of common
talk, that all the meannesses of slander and gossip and
misinterpretation are unknown, and that charity, courtesy, and honour
are the unfailing law of intercourse, we threw down our reserves and
experienced the refreshing freedom and sympathy of full knowledge
between man and man.

After a long succession of golden days we awoke one morning to the
familiar sound of rain on the roof; there was no mistake about it; it
was raining in Arden! Rosalind was so incredulous that I could see she
doubted