erene
beauty. As it came to me--hills, fields, woods--the fever which had been
consuming me died down. I thought how the world stretched away from my
fences--just such fields--for a thousand miles, and in each small
enclosure a man as hot as I with the passion of possession. How they all
envied, and hated, in their longing for more land! How property kept
them apart, prevented the close, confident touch of friendship, how it
separated lovers and ruined families! Of all obstacles to that complete
democracy of which we dream, is there a greater than property?

I was ashamed. Deep shame covered me. How little of the earth, after
all, I said, lies within the limits of my fences. And I looked out upon
the perfect beauty of the world around me, and I saw how little excited
it was, how placid, how undemanding.

I had come here to be free and already this farm, which I thought of so
fondly as my possession, was coming to possess me. Ownership is an
appetite like hunger or thirst, and as we may eat to gluttony and drink
to drunkenness so we may possess to avarice. How many men have I seen
who, though they regard themselves as models of temperance, wear the
marks of unbridled indulgence of the passion of possession, and how like
gluttony or licentiousness it sets its sure sign upon their faces.

I said to myself, Why should any man fence himself in? And why hope to
enlarge one's world by the creeping acquisition of a few acres to his
farm? I thought of the old scientist, who, laying his hand upon the
grass, remarked: "Everything under my hand is a miracle"--forgetting
that everything outside was also a miracle.

[Illustration: "HOW GRACEFUL CLIMB THESE SHADOWS ON MY HILL"]

As I stood there I glanced across the broad valley wherein lies the most
of my farm, to a field of buckwheat which belongs to Horace. For an
instant it gave me the illusion of a hill on fire: for the late sun
shone full on the thick ripe stalks of the buckwheat, giving forth an
abundant red glory that blessed the eye. Horace had been proud of his
crop, smacking his lips at the prospect of winter pancakes, and here I
was entering his field and taking without hindrance another crop, a crop
gathered not with hands nor stored in granaries: a wonderful crop,
which, once gathered, may long be fed upon and yet remain unconsumed.

So I looked across the countryside; a group of elms here, a tufted
hilltop there, the smooth verdure of pastures, the rich brown of
n