The very bed-linen, bleached in the open air, had acquired the
fragrance of mountain thyme and lavender. I did not need to climb the
hill to find the pine-woods; they grew round the very table where I
ate. Four walls and a roof gave me shelter, yet I lived in the open
air all the time.

Then there was also the silence, at first so strange as to be almost
oppressive, but later on sweeter than music. It was at early morning
and nightfall that this silence was most intense. On a still night one
could almost hear the earth move, and fancy that the stars diffused a
gentle crackling noise as of rushing flame. The fall of an acorn in a
pine wood startled the ear like an explosion. The river also was
discerned as having a definite rhythm of its own. It ran up and down a
perpetual scale, like a bird singing. What had seemed a heavy confused
sound of falling water resolved itself into regular harmonies, which
could have been written down in musical notation. At times there was
also in the air the sense of breathing. On a dark night, standing at
my door, I had the sense of a great heart that beat in the obscurity,
of a bosom that rose and fell, of a pulse as regular as a clock. I
think that the ear must have recovered a fine sensitiveness, normal to
it under normal conditions, but lost or dulled amid the deafening roar
of towns. It is scarcely an exaggeration when poets speak of hearing
the grass grow; we could hear it, no doubt, if the ear were not stunned
by more violent sounds.

It is probable that mere increase of vitality in itself is sufficient
to account for this new delicacy of the physical senses. The senses
adapt themselves to their environment. An example of this is found in
the absence of what is called long sight among city children. Having
no extensive horizon constantly before the eye, the power of discerning