It is an inviting subject. How an old man likes to
run on about himself!
I see that my life has been more of a holiday than most persons',
much more than was my father's or his father's. I have picnicked
all along the way. I have on the whole been gay and satisfied. I
have had no great crosses or burdens to bear; no great afflictions,
except such as must come to all who live; neither poverty, nor
riches. I have had uniform good health, true friends, and some
congenial companions. I have done, for the most part, what I
wanted to do. Some drudgery I have had, that is, in uncongenial
work on the farm, in teaching, in clerking, and in bank-examining;
but amid all these things I have kept an outlook, an open door, as
it were, out into the free fields of nature, and a buoyant feeling
that I would soon be there.
My farm life as a boy was at least a half-holiday. The fishing,
the hunting, the berrying, the Sundays on the hills or in the
woods, the sugar-making, the apple-gathering--all had a holiday
character. But the hoeing corn, and picking up potatoes, and
cleaning the cow stables, had little of this character. I have
never been a cog in the wheel of any great concern. I have never
had to sink or lose my individuality. I have been under no exacting
master or tyrant.
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