_tuum_: for only thus, by comparing ourselves with our neighbours, can
we come to the true realisation of property. Occasionally I stopped to
pick up a stone and cast it over the fence, thinking with some
truculence that my neighbour would probably throw it back again. Never
mind, I had it out of _my_ field. Once, with eager surplusage of energy,
I pulled down a dead and partly rotten oak stub, long an eye-sore, with
an important feeling of proprietorship. I could do anything I liked. The
farm was _mine_.

How sweet an emotion is possession! What charm is inherent in ownership!
What a foundation for vanity, even for the greater quality of
self-respect, lies in a little property! I fell to thinking of the
excellent wording of the old books in which land is called "real
property," or "real estate." Money we may possess, or goods or chattels,
but they give no such impression of mineness as the feeling that one's
feet rest upon soil that is his: that part of the deep earth is his with
all the water upon it, all small animals that creep or crawl in the
holes of it, all birds or insects that fly in the air above it, all
trees, shrubs, flowers, and grass that grow upon it, all houses, barns
and fences--all, his. As I strode along that afternoon I fed upon
possession. I rolled the sweet morsel of ownership under my tongue. I
seemed to set my feet down more firmly on the good earth. I straightened
my shoulders: _this land was mine_. I picked up a clod of earth and let
it crumble and drop through my fingers: it gave me a peculiar and
poignant feeling of possession. I can understand why the miser enjoys
the very physical contact of his gold. Every sense I possessed, sight,
hearing, smell, touch, led upon the new joy.

At one corner of my upper field the fence crosses an abrupt ravine upon
leggy stilts. My line skirts the slope halfway up. My neighbour owns the