rden each one knows for himself. The stories
of travellers cease to interest us when we are at last within the
borders of the strange, far country.

Books are, at the best, faint and imperfect transcriptions of Nature
and life; when one comes to see Nature as she is with his own eyes, and
to enter into the secrets of life, all transcriptions become
inadequate. He who has heard the mysterious and haunting monotone of
the sea will never rest content with the noblest harmony in which the
composer seeks to blend those deep, elusive tones; he who has sat hour
by hour under the spell of the deep woods will feel that spell shorn of
its magical power in the noblest verse that ever sought to contain and
express it; he who has once looked with clear, unflinching gaze into
the depths of human life will find only vague shadows of the mighty
realities in the greatest drama and fiction. The eternal struggle of
art is to utter these unutterable things; the immortal thirst of the
soul will lead it again and again to these ancient fountains, whence it
will bring back its handful of water in vessels curiously carven by the
hands of imagination. But no cup of man's making will ever hold all
that fountain has to give, and to those who are really athirst these
golden and beautifully wrought vessels are insufficient; they must
drink of the living stream.

In Arden we found these ancient and perennial fountains; and we drank
deep and long. There was that in the mystery of the woods which made
all poetry seem pale and unreal to us; there was that in life, as we
saw it in the noble souls about us, which made all records and
transcriptions in books seem cold and superficial. What need had we of
verse when the things which the greatest poets had seen with vision no
clearer than ours lay clear and unspeakably beautiful before us? What
had fiction or history for us, upon whom the thrilling spell of the
deepest human living was laid! Rosalind and I were hourly meeting
those whose thoughts had fed the world for generations, and whose names
were on all lips, but they never spoke of the books they had written,
the pictures they had painted, the music they had composed. And,
strange to say, it was not because of these splendid works that we were
drawn to them; it was the quality of their natures, the deep,
compelling charm of their minds, which filled us with joy in their
companionship. In Arden it is a small matter that Shakespeare has
writ