The Hills of Hingham | Page 3

mind. Thought is a country
product and comes in to the city for distribution, as books are gathered
and distributed by libraries, but not written in libraries. It is against the
wide, drab background of the country that thought most naturally reacts,
thinking being only the excitement of a man discovering himself, as he
is compelled to do, where bending horizon and arching sky shift as he
shifts in all creation's constant endeavor to swing around and center on
him. Nothing centers on him in the city, where he thinks by "mental
massage"--through the scalp with laying on of hands, as by benediction

or shampoo.
But for the busy man, say of forty, are the hills of Hingham with their
adventure possible? Why, there is nothing ailing the man of forty
except that he now is neither young nor old, nor rich, the chances are;
nor a dead failure either, but just an average man; yet he is one of God's
people, if the Philistines were (He brought them from Caphtor) and the
Syrians (those He brought from Kir). The man of forty has a right to so
much of the Promised Land as a hill in Hingham. But he is afraid to
possess it because it is so far from work and friends and lighted streets.
He is afraid of the dark and of going off to sit down upon a stump for
converse with himself. He is afraid he won't get his work done. If his
work were planting beans, he would get none planted surely while on
the stump; but so he might be saved the ungracious task of giving away
his surplus beans to bean-ridden friends for the summer. A man, I
believe, can plant too many beans. He might not finish the freshman
themes either. But when was the last freshman theme ever done? Finish
them if he can, he has only baked the freshmen into sophomores, and
so emptied the ovens for another batch of dough. He shall never put a
crust on the last freshman, and not much of a crust on the last
sophomore either, the Almighty refusing to coöperate with him in the
baking. Let him do the best he can, not the most he can, and quit for
Hingham and the hills where he can go out to a stump and sit down.
College students also are a part of that world which can be too much
with us, cabbages, too, if we are growing cabbages. We don't do
over-much, but we are over-busy. We want too much. Buy a little hill
in Hingham, and even out here, unless you pray and go apart often to
your stump, your desire will be toward every hill in sight and the
valleys between.
According to the deed my hill comprises "fourteen acres more or less"
of an ancient glacier, a fourteen-acre heap of unmitigated gravel, which
now these almost fourteen years I have been trying to clear of stones,
picking, picking for a whole Stone Age, and planning daily to buy the
nine-acre ridge adjoining me which is gravelier than mine. By actual
count we dumped five hundred cartloads of stones into the foundation

of a porch when making over the house recently--and still I am out in
the garden picking, picking, living in the Stone Age still, and planning
to prolong the stay by nine acres more that are worse than these I now
have, nine times worse for stones!
I shall never cease picking stones, I presume, but perhaps I can get out
a permanent injunction against myself, to prevent my buying that
neighboring gravel hill, and so find time to climb my own and sit down
among the beautiful moth-infested oak trees.
I do sit down, and I thrust my idle hands hard into my pockets to keep
them from the Devil who would have them out at the moths
instantly--an evil job, killing moths, worse than picking stones!
Nothing is more difficult to find anywhere than time to sit down with
yourself, except the ability to enjoy the time after finding it,--even here
on a hill in Hingham, if the hill is in woods. There are foes to face in
the city and floods to stem out here, but let no one try to fight several
acres of caterpillars. When you see them coming, climb your stump and
wait on the Lord. He is slow; and the caterpillars are horribly fast. True.
Yet I say. To your stump and wait--and learn how restful a thing it is to
sit down by faith. For the town sprayer is a vain thing. The roof of
green is riddled. The rafters overhead reach out as naked as in
December. Ruin looks through. On sweep the devouring hosts in spite
of arsenate of lead