Adventures in Contentment | Page 8

who goes with
nothing save his lyre? He shall sing as he goes: he shall not be held
down nor fenced in.
With a lifting of the soul I thought of that old abbot, how smooth his
brow, how catholic his interest, how serene his outlook, how free his
friendships, how unlimited his whole life. Nothing but a lyre!
So I made a covenant there with myself. I said: "I shall use, not be used.
I do not limit myself here. I shall not allow possessions to come
between me and my life or my friends."
For a time--how long I do not know--I stood thinking. Presently I
discovered, moving slowly along the margin of the field below me, the
old professor with his tin botany box. And somehow I had no feeling
that he was intruding upon my new land. His walk was slow and
methodical, his head and even his shoulders were bent--almost
habitually--from looking close upon the earth, and from time to time he
stooped, and once he knelt to examine some object that attracted his
eye. It seemed appropriate that he should thus kneel to the earth. So he
gathered his crop and fences did not keep him out nor titles disturb him.
He also was free! It gave me at that moment a peculiar pleasure to have
him on my land, to know that I was, if unconsciously, raising other
crops than I knew. I felt friendship for this old professor: I could

understand him, I thought. And I said aloud but in a low tone, as
though I were addressing him:
--Do not apologise, friend, when you come into my field. You do not
interrupt me. What you have come for is of more importance at this
moment than corn. Who is it that says I must plow so many furrows
this day? Come in, friend, and sit here on these clods: we will sweeten
the evening with fine words. We will invest our time not in corn, or in
cash, but in life.--
I walked with confidence down the hill toward the professor. So
engrossed was he with his employment that he did not see me until I
was within a few paces of him. When he looked up at me it was as
though his eyes returned from some far journey. I felt at first out of
focus, unplaced, and only gradually coming into view. In his hand he
held a lump of earth containing a thrifty young plant of the purple
cone-flower, having several blossoms. He worked at the lump deftly,
delicately, so that the earth, pinched, powdered and shaken out, fell
between his fingers, leaving the knotty yellow roots in his hand. I
marked how firm, slow, brown, the old man was, how little obtrusive in
my field. One foot rested in a furrow, the other was set among the grass
of the margin, near the fence--his place, I thought.
His first words, though of little moment in themselves, gave me a
curious satisfaction, as when a coin, tested, rings true gold, or a hero,
tried, is heroic.
"I have rarely," he said, "seen a finer display of rudbeckia than this,
along these old fences."
If he had referred to me, or questioned, or apologised, I should have
been disappointed. He did not say, "your fences," he said "these
fences," as though they were as much his as mine. And he spoke in his
own world, knowing that if I could enter I would, but that if I could not,
no stooping to me would avail either of us.
"It has been a good autumn for flowers," I said inanely, for so many
things were flying through my mind that I could not at once think of the

great particular words which should bring us together. At first I thought
my chance had passed, but he seemed to see something in me after all,
for he said:
"Here is a peculiarly large specimen of the rudbeckia. Observe the deep
purple of the cone, and the bright yellow of the petals. Here is another
that grew hardly two feet away, in the grass near the fence where the
rails and the blackberry bushes have shaded it. How small and
undeveloped it is."
"They crowd up to the plowed land," I observed.
"Yes, they reach out for a better chance in life--like men. With more
room, better food, freer air, you see how much finer they grow."
It was curious to me, having hitherto barely observed the cone-flowers
along my fences, save as a colour of beauty, how simply we fell to
talking of them as though in truth they were people like ourselves,
having our desires and possessed of our capabilities. It gave me then,
for the first time, the feeling which has