May - Page 2

towards the setting sun is like going into the very presence of God.

In the middle of this plain is the oasis of birdcherries and greenery
where I spend my happy days, and in the middle of the oasis is the gray
stone house with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights.
The house is very old, and has been added to at various times.
It was a convent before the Thirty Years' War, and the vaulted chapel,
with its brick floor worn by pious peasant knees, is now used as a hall.
Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once,
as is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what was
then the high-road between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate.
The Lion of the North was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly
up to his convictions, but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns,
who were not without convictions of their own, sending them out on to
the wide, empty plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life
of silence here.

From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out
across the plain, with no obstacle in the shape of a hill,
right away to a blue line of distant forest, and on the west
side uninterruptedly to the setting sun--nothing but a green,
rolling plain, with a sharp edge against the sunset.
I love those west windows better than any others, and have
chosen my bedroom on that side of the house so that even times
of hair-brushing may not be entirely lost, and the young woman
who attends to such matters has been taught to fulfil her duties
about a mistress recumbent in an easychair before an open window,
and not to profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time.
This girl is grieved at my habit of living almost in the garden,
and all her ideas as to the sort of life a respectable German lady
should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came to me.
The people round about are persuaded that I am, to put it
as kindly as possible, exceedingly eccentric, for the news
has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book,
and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook.
But why cook when you can get some one to cook for you?
And as for sewing, the maids will hem the sheets better and
quicker than I could, and all forms of needlework of the fancy
order are inventions of the evil one for keeping the foolish
from applying their heart to wisdom.

We had been married five years before it struck us that we
might as well make use of this place by coming down and living
in it. Those five years were spent in a flat in a town,
and during their whole interminable length I was perfectly
miserable and perfectly healthy, which disposes of the ugly
notion that has at times disturbed me that my happiness
here is