should be despised if I was noticed. This happened once or twice, and I knew
I was watched contemptuously,
though no one had the least idea of my object. But I went
every morning, and was satisfied if I could get two or three minutes to
think unchecked. Often I saw the sun rise over the line of the hills, but if
it was summer the sun had been up a long time.

I looked at the hills, at the dewy grass, and then up through
the elm branches to the sky. In a moment all that was behind
me, the house, the people, the sounds, seemed to disappear, and to leave me
alone. Involuntarily I drew a long breath, then I
breathed slowly. My thought, or inner consciousness, went up through the
illumined sky, and I was lost in a moment of exaltation. This only lasted a
very short time, perhaps only
part of a second, and while it lasted there was no formulated wish. I was
absorbed; I drank the beauty of the morning; I was exalted. When it ceased
I did wish for some increase or enlargement of my existence to correspond
with the largeness of feeling I had momentarily enjoyed. Sometimes the wind
came through the tops of the elms, and the slender boughs bent, and gazing
up through them, and beyond the fleecy clouds, I felt lifted up. The light
coming across the grass and leaving itself on the dew-drops, the sound of
the wind, and the sense of mounting to the lofty heaven, filled me with a
deep sigh, a wish to draw something out of the beauty of it, some part of
that which caused my admiration, the subtle inner essence.

Sometimes the green tips of the highest boughs seemed gilded,
the light laid a gold on the green. Or the trees bowed to a
stormy wind roaring through them, the grass threw itself down, and in the
east broad curtains of a rosy tint stretched along. The light was turned to
redness in the vapour, and rain hid the