gether, a magnetic current is set up between
them: a flow of common understanding and confidence. I would call the
attention of all great Scientists, Philosophers, and Theologians to this
phenomenon: it will repay investigation. It is at once the rarest and
the commonest thing I know. It shows that down deep within us, where we
really live, we are all a good deal alike. We have much the same
instincts, hopes, joys, sorrows. If only it were not for the outward
things that we commonly look upon as important (which are in reality not
at all important) we might come together without fear, vanity, envy, or
prejudice and be friends. And what a world it would be! If civilisation
means anything at all it means the increasing ability of men to look
through material possessions, through clothing, through differences of
speech and colour of skin, and to see the genuine man that abides within
each of us. It means an escape from symbols!

I tell this merely to show what surprising and unexpected things have
grown out of my farm. All along I have had more than I bargained for.
From now on I shall marvel at nothing! When I ordered my own life I
failed; now that I work from day to day, doing that which I can do best
and which most delights me, I am rewarded in ways that I could not have
imagined. Why, it would not surprise me if heaven were at the end of all
this!

Now, I am not so foolish as to imagine that a farm is a perfect place.
In these Adventures I have emphasised perhaps too forcibly the joyful
and pleasant features of my life. In what I have written I have
naturally chosen only those things which were most interesting and
charming. My life has not been without discouragement and loss and
loneliness (loneliness most of all). I have enjoyed the hard work; the
little troubles have troubled me more than the big ones. I detest
unharnessing a muddy horse in the rain! I don't like chickens in the
barn. And somehow Harriet uses an inordinate amount of kindling wood.
But once in the habit, unpleasant things have a way of fading quickly
and quietly from the memory.

And you see after living so many years in the city the worst experience
on the farm is a sort of joy!

In most men as I come to know them--I mean men who dare to look
themselves in the eye--I find a deep desire for more naturalness, more
directness. How weary we all grow of this fabric of deception which is
called modern life. How passionately we desire to escape but ca