ntry of hills and streams. As the road
was not a thoroughfare and journeyed no farther than the near-by town
where I was to get my supper, it went at a lazy winding pace. If a dog
barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his
loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows
that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more
contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares.
Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet
across the hills.

The country was laid out with farms--orchards and soft fields of grain
that waved like a golden lake--but there were few farmhouses. In all
the afternoon I passed but one person, a deaf man who asked for
direction. When I cried out that I was a stranger, he held his hand to
his ear, but his mouth fell open as if my words, denied by deafness
from a proper portal, were offered here a service entrance. I spread
my map before him and he put an ample thumb upon it. Then inquiring
whether I had crossed a road with a red house upon it where his friend
resided, he thanked me and walked off with such speed as his years had
left him. Birds sang delightfully on the fences and in the field, yet
I knew not their names. Shall one not enjoy a symphony without precise
knowledge of the instrument that gives the tune? If an oboe sound a
melody, must one bestow a special praise, with a knowledge of its
function in the concert? Or if a trombone please, must one know the
brassy creature by its name? Rather, whether I listen to horns or
birds, in my ignorance I bestow loosely a general approbation; yet is
the song sweet.

All afternoon I walked with the sound of wind and water in my ears,
and at night, when I had gained my journey's end and lay in bed, I
heard beneath my window in the garden the music of a little runnel
that was like a faint and pleasant echo of my hillside walk. I fell
asleep to its soothing sound and its trickle made a pattern across my
dreams.

But perhaps you yourself, my dear sir, are addicted to these country
walks, either for an afternoon or for a week's duration with a
rucksack strapped across your back. If denied the longer outing, I
hope that at least it is your custom to go forth upon a holiday to
look upon the larger earth. Where the road most winds and dips and the
distance is of the finer purple, let that direction be your choice!
Seek out the region of the hills! Outposts and valleys here,