our possessions,
when, as a matter of fact, we do not really possess them, they possess
us. For ten years I have been the humble servant, attending upon the
commonest daily needs of sundry hens, ducks, geese, pigs, bees, and of
a fussy and exacting old gray mare. And the habit of servitude, I find,
has worn deep scars upon me. I am almost like the life prisoner who
finds the door of his cell suddenly open, and fears to escape. Why, I
had almost become ALL farmer.

On the first morning after I left home I awoke as usual about five
o'clock with the irresistible feeling that I must do the milking. So
well disciplined had I become in my servitude that I instinctively
thrust my leg out of bed--but pulled it quickly back in again, turned
over, drew a long, luxurious breath, and said to myself:

"Avaunt cows! Get thee behind me, swine! Shoo, hens!"

Instantly the clatter of mastery to which I had responded so quickly
for so many years grew perceptibly fainter, the hens cackled less
domineeringly, the pigs squealed less insistently, and as for the
strutting cockerel, that lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in the
middle of a crow, and his voice gurgled away in a spasm of astonishment.
As for the old farmhouse, it grew so dim I could scarcely see it at all!
Having thus published abroad my Declaration of Independence, nailed my
defiance to the door, and otherwise established myself as a free person,
I turned over in my bed and took another delicious nap.

Do you know, friend, we can be free of many things that dominate our
lives by merely crying out a rebellious "Avaunt!"

But in spite of this bold beginning, I assure you it required several
days to break the habit of cows and hens. The second morning I awakened
again at five o'clock, but my leg did not make for the side of the
bed; the third morning I was only partially awakened, and on the fourth
morning I slept like a millionaire (or at least I slept as a millionaire
is supposed to sleep!) until the clock struck seven.

For some days after I left home--and I walked out as casually that
morning as though I were going to the barn--I scarcely thought or
tried to think of anything but the Road. Such an unrestrained sense of
liberty, such an exaltation of freedom, I have not known since I was a
lad. When I came to my farm from the city many years ago it was as one
bound, as one who had lost out in the World's battle and was seeking
to get hold again somewhere upon the r