From my upper field, when I look across the countryside, I can see in
the distance a short stretch of the gray town road. It winds out of a
little wood, crosses a knoll, and loses itself again beyond the trees of
an old orchard. I love that spot in my upper field, and the view of the
road beyond. When I am at work there I have only to look up to see the
world go by--part of it going down to the town, and part of it coming up
again. And I never see a traveller on the hill, especially if he be
afoot, without feeling that if I met him I should like him, and that
whatever he had to say I should like to hear.
* * * * *
At first I could not make out what the man was doing. Most of the
travellers I see from my field are like the people I commonly meet--so
intent upon their destination that they take no joy of the road they
travel. They do not even see me here in the fields; and if they did,
they would probably think me a slow and unprofitable person. I have
nothing that they can carry away and store up in barns, or reduce to
percentages, or calculate as profit and loss; they do not perceive what
a wonderful place this is; they do not know that here, too, we gather a
crop of contentment.
But apparently this man was the pattern of a loiterer. I saw him stop on
the knoll and look widely about him. Then he stooped down as though
searching for something, then moved slowly forward for a few steps. Just
at that point in the road lies a great smooth boulder which road-makers
long since dead had rolled out upon the wayside. Here to my
astonishment I saw him kneel upon the ground. He had something in one
hand with which he seemed intently occupied. After a time he stood up,
and retreating a few steps down the road, he scanned the boulder
narrowly.
"This," I said to myself, "may be something for me."
So I crossed the fence and walked down the neighbouring field. It was an
Indian summer day with hazy hillsides, and still sunshine, and
slumbering brown fields--the sort of a day I love. I leaped the little
brook in the valley and strode hastily up the opposite slope. I cannot
describe what a sense I had of new worlds to be found here in old
fields. So I came to the fence on the other side and looked over. My man
was kneeling again at the rock. I was scarcely twenty paces from him,
but so earnestly was he engaged that he never once saw me. I had a good
look at him. He was a small, thin man with straight gray hair; above his
collar I could see the weather-brown wrinkles of his neck. His coat was
of black, of a noticeably neat appearance, and I observed, as a further
evidence of fastidiousness rare upon the Road, that he was saving his
trousers by kneeling on a bit of carpet. What he could be doing there so
intently by the roadside I could not imagine. So I climbed the fence,
making some little intentional noise as I did so. He arose immediately.
Then I saw at his side on the ground two small tin cans, and in his
hands a pair of paint brushes. As he stepped aside I saw the words he
had been painting on the boulder: