and pick
out here a landmark, there a figure, and set my own feet back in the
old ways, and live over the old events. It is real enough, as by my
beating heart you might know.

Sometimes my father took us out by the Long Road. There is no road in
the neighborhood of Polotzk by that name, but I know very well that
the way was long to my little feet; and long are the backward thoughts
that creep along it, like a sunbeam travelling with the day.

The first landmark on the sunny, dusty road is the house of a peasant
acquaintance where we stopped for rest and a drink. I remember a cool
gray interior, a woman with her bosom uncovered pattering barefoot to
hand us the hospitable dipper, and a baby smothered in a deep cradle
which hung by ropes from the ceiling. Farther on, the empty road gave
us shadows of trees and rustlings of long grass. This, at least, is
what I imagine over the spaces where no certain object is. Then, I
know, we ran and played, and it was father himself who hid in the
corn, and we made havoc following after. Laughing, we ramble on, till
we hear the long, far whistle of a locomotive. The railroad track is
just visible over the field on the _left_ of the road; the cornfield,
I say, is on the _right_. We stand on tiptoe and wave our hands and
shout as the long train rushes by at a terrific speed, leaving its
pennon of smoke behind.

The passing of the train thrilled me wonderfully. Where did it come
from, and whither did it fly, and how did it feel to be one of the
faces at the windows? If ever I dreamed of a world beyond Polotzk, it
must have been at those times, though I do not honestly remember.

Somewhere out on that same Long Road is the place where we once
attended a wedding. I do not know who were married, or whether they
lived happily ever after; but I remember that when the dancers were
wearied, and we were all sated with goodies, day was dawning, and
several of the young people went out for a stroll in a grove near by.
They took me with them--who were they?--and they lost me. At any rate,
when they saw me again, I was a stranger. For I had sojourned, for an
immeasurable moment, in a world apart from theirs. I had witnessed my
first sunrise; I had watched the rosy morning tiptoe in among the
silver birches. And that grove stands on the _left_ side of the road.

We had another stopping-place out in that direction. It was the place
where my mother sent her hundred and more house plants to be car