The fresh morning wind whisked up to me and kissed my face bewitchingly, as Ben removed his tall, burly form from the narrow opening between the two trees, and left me alone there in the shade, with nothing between rue and the view.
That moment revealed to me the joy of all liberated prisoners. My eyes flew over the wide earth and the broad heavens. After a sweeping view of both in their vast unity, I began to single out particulars. There lay the village in the lap of the hills, in summer time “bosomed high in tufted trees,” but now only half veiled by the gauze-like green of the budding foliage. The apple orchards, still white with blossoms, and green with wheat or early grass, extended up the hills, and encroached upon the dense brown forests. There was the little red brick turret which crowned the village church, and my eye rested lovingly upon it. Not that it was anything to me; but Kate and all the women I respect, love it, or what it stands for, and through them I hope to experience that warm love of worship, and of the places dedicated to it, which seems native to them, and much to be desired for us. I have eared little for such things hitherto. Their beauty and happiness are just beginning to dawn upon me.
-“Dear Jesus, can it be? Wait we till all things go from us or e’er we go to thee? Ay, sooth! We feel such strength in weal, thy love may seem withstood: But what are we in agony? Dumb, if we cry not ‘God!’ ”
Behind the village I can see the blue hazy line of a far-distant horizon, as the valley opens in that direction. I know the sea lies there, and sometimes I fancy that mirage lifts its dark waters to my sight. In, a wooded nook on my right stands the little brown mill, with its huge wheel, and wide blue pond, and foamy waterfall. On that day I heard its drone, and saw the geese bathing, and throwing up the bright sparkling drops with their wings, until they fell like fountains. On my left lay “a little lane serene,” with stone fences half hid by blackberrybushes,—
-“A little lane serene, Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with un- broken snows. Or in the summer blithe with lamb-cropped green, Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months’ sunshine bound in sheaves.”
I thought of those lines there and then, and they enhanced even the joy of Nature. They tinged her for me with the magic colors of poetry. When I had thus scrutinized earth, I looked up to heaven. It had been so long shut from me by the network of the grove, that it was like escaping from confining toils, to look straight into Heaven’s face, with nothing between, not even a cloud.
I have never seen a sweeter, calmer picture than that I gazed upon all the morning, and for which the two huge old cedars formed a rugged, but harmonious frame.
I have lived out of doors since. When it is cold, I am wrapped in a wadded robe Kate has made for me,—a capital thing, loose, and warm, and silky-soft. To an invalid with nerves all on edge, that is much. I never found out, until Kate enveloped me in its luxurious folds, what it was that rasped my feelings so, every morning, when I was dressed; I then knew it must have been my flashy woollen dressing-gown. I envy women their soft raiment, and I rather dread the day when I shall be compelled to wear coats again. (Let me cheat myself, if I can.)
III.
May, 1855.
You wish to know more of Ben. I am glad of it You shall be immediately gratified.
He is a true Scot, tall and strong and sandy-haired, with quick gray eyes, and a grave countenance, which relaxes only upon very great provocation.
Before I came here, he was known
