The Friendly Road | Page 5

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 realities of life. I have related
elsewhere how I thus came creeping like one sore wounded from the
field of battle, and how, among our hills, in the hard, steady labour in
the soil of the fields, with new and simple friends around me, I found a
sort of rebirth or resurrection. I that was worn out, bankrupt both
physically and morally, learned to live again. I have achieved
something of high happiness in these years, something I know of pure
contentment; and I have learned two or three deep and simple things
about life: I have learned that happiness is not to be had for the seeking,
but comes quietly to him who pauses at his difficult task and looks
upward. I have learned that friendship is very simple, and, more than all
else, I have learned the lesson of being quiet, of looking out across the
meadows and hills, and of trusting a little in God.
And now, for the moment, I am regaining another of the joys of
youth--that of the sense of perfect freedom. I made no plans when I left
home, I scarcely chose the direction in which I was to travel, but drifted
out, as a boy might, into the great busy world. Oh, I have dreamed of
that! It seems almost as though, after ten years, I might again really
touch the highest joys of adventure!
So I took the Road as it came, as a man takes a woman, for better or
worse--I took the Road, and the farms along it, and the sleepy little
villages, and the streams from the hillsides--all with high enjoyment.
They were good coin in my purse! And when I had passed the narrow
horizon of my acquaintanceship, and reached country new to me, it
seemed as though every sense I had began to awaken. I must have

grown dull, unconsciously, in the last years there on my farm. I cannot
describe the eagerness of discovery I felt at climbing each new hill, nor
the long breath I took at the top of it as I surveyed new stretches of
pleasant countryside.
Assuredly this is one of the royal moments of all the year--fine, cool,
sparkling spring weather. I think I never saw the meadows richer and
greener--and the lilacs are still blooming, and the