mself to his feet. He walks, he can sit
in a chair, but will not. If he only would, what care and trouble might
be taken from his protectors. But he has found the door open and the
alluring dangers beyond; he has found a new realm which he hears called
in the homely country speech out-of-doors. There is where he now lives
and finds his liveliest interests. As he is no longer a creeper but a
being of importance to himself he deserves a name, and it shall be
henceforth I--my own small, as yet uncapitalized i.

The walls of my newly extended world are the low enchanted hills of
Mendon. There the sky seems to curve down, to rest and to end. It takes
a long time to remove that horizon line; even when one is six feet, it
often remains in its accustomed place. I shall pass beyond it, yet
return again. My vision will be often contracted; I shall see what I
once saw, become what I once was; shadowy memories become bright by the
touch of hand and foot, and even the sense of smell shall guide me
through many a path and restore many a room, many a threshing floor and
corn crib. When thrust back upon myself, defeated, hopeless, I have
retreated to the scenes of my childhood where I could be triumphant and
happy in possessions, of which I cannot be deprived, and that are beyond
my own power to alienate. But that time is far in the future and I am
contented with the walls of my present world now expanded to the hills
of Mendon. Between them and me flows the Charles stream. It is
impassible as far as I can see, yet I have heard and been warned of a
bridge full of peril. It is, however, an incredible distance to that
bridge--as much as a quarter of a mile. When there, I dare not go
forward lest I might be lost. I tremble with desire and apprehension. I
return, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until, breaking into a
run, I reach my mother's yard, where agitated but safe, I seem to have
escaped some fearful thing. This risk gives me joy. So I go again, and
this time I shall pass over the bridge and beyond into the unknown that
eludes me. Adding to danger the temptation to disobedience, I go to the
bridge oftener and oftener, sometimes leaning over the rail to watch for
a while the chips and straws floating along the surface of the slow
stream. They are moving in a direction of which I know nothing. The
depth of the water at the bridge is not great, yet deep enough to be
mysterious and it hypnotises me. It draws me into it and I los