hining smoothness, their olive hue. Hard by stood
a bush of wych elm; its tettered bark, overlined as if with the character
of some unknown tongue, made the young ashes yet more beautiful.

It matters not how long I wander. There is no task to bring me back; no
one will be vexed or uneasy, linger I ever so late. Spring is shining
upon these lanes and meadows; I feel as if I must follow every winding
track that opens by my way. Spring has restored to me something of the
long-forgotten vigour of youth; I walk without weariness; I sing to
myself like a boy, and the song is one I knew in boyhood.

That reminds me of an incident. Near a hamlet, in a lonely spot by a
woodside, I came upon a little lad of perhaps ten years old, who, his
head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying bitterly. I
asked him what was the matter, and, after a little trouble--he was better
than a mere bumpkin--I learnt that, having been sent with sixpence to pay
a debt, he had lost the money. The poor little fellow was in a state of
mind which in a grave man would be called the anguish of despair; he must
have been crying for a long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if
under torture, his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such misery
as only the vilest criminal should be made to suffer. And it was because
he had lost sixpence!

I could have shed tears with him--tears of pity and of rage at all this
spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth and
heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose nature
would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his heart out
because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss was a very
serious one, and he knew it; he was less afraid to face his parents, than
overcome by misery at the thought of the harm he had done them. Sixpence
dropped by the wayside, and a whole family made wretched! What are the
due descriptive terms for a state of "civilization" in which such a thing
as this is possible