"
And after dinner how pleasant it was to stretch at full length for a
few minutes on the grass in the shade of the maple tree and look up
through the dusky thick shadows of the leaves. If ever a man feels the
blissfulness of complete content it is at such a moment--every muscle in
the body deliciously resting, and a peculiar exhilaration animating the
mind to quiet thoughts. I have heard talk of the hard work of the
hay-fields, but I never yet knew a healthy man who did not recall many
moments of exquisite pleasure connected with the hardest and the hottest
work.
I think sometimes that the nearer a man can place himself in the full
current of natural things the happier he is. If he can become a part of
the Universal Process and know that he is a part, that is happiness. All
day yesterday I had that deep quiet feeling that I was somehow not
working for myself, not because I was covetous for money, nor driven by
fear, not surely for fame, but somehow that I was a necessary element in
the processes of the earth. I was a primal force! I was the
indispensable Harvester. Without me the earth could not revolve!
Oh, friend, there are spiritual values here, too. For how can a man
know God without yielding himself fully to the processes of God?
I _lived_ yesterday.
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