June 6, 1891.
I had a beautiful walk to-day. I went a short way by train, and
descending at a wayside station, found a little field-path, that
led me past an old, high-gabled, mullioned farmhouse, with all the
pleasant litter of country life about it. Then I passed along some
low-lying meadows, deep in grass, where the birds sang sweetly,
muffled in leaves. The fields there were all full of orchids,
purple as wine, and the gold of buttercups floated on the top of
the rich meadow-grass. Then I passed into a wood, and for a long
time I walked in the green glooms of copses, in a forest stillness,
only the tall trees rustling softly overhead, with doves cooing
deep in the wood. Only once I passed a house, a little cottage of
grey stone, in a clearing, with an air of settled peace about it,
that reminded me of an old sweet book that I used to read as a
child, Phantastes, full of the mysterious romance of deep forests
and haunted glades. I was overshadowed that afternoon with a sense
of the ineffectiveness, the loneliness of my life, walking in a
vain shadow; but it melted out of my mind in the delicate beauty of
the woodland, with its wild fragrances and cool airs, as when one
chafes one's frozen hands before a leaping flame.
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