It does not require much imagination to believe that these hardy vegetable mountaineers love their wild, desolate dwelling-places as truly as do the human residents of the region. An old man in Bethlehem told me that sometimes, during the long, cold winter, he felt that perhaps it would be well for him, now his work was done, to sell his "place" and go down to Boston to live, near his brother. "But then," he added, "you know it's dangerous transplanting an old tree; you're likely as not to kill it." Whatever we have, in this world, we must pay for with the loss of something else. The bitter must be taken with the sweet, be we plants, animals, or men. These thoughts recurred to me a day or two later, as I lay on the summit of Mount Agassiz, in the sun and out of the wind, gazing down into the Franconia Valley, then in all its June beauty. Nestled under the lee of the mountain, but farther from the base, doubtless, than it seemed from my point of view, was a small dwelling, scarcely better than a shanty. Two or three young children were playing about the door, and near them was the man of the house splitting wood. The air was still enough for me to hear every blow, although it reached me only as the axe was again over the man's head, ready for the next descent. It was a charming picture,--the broad, green valley full of sunshine and peace, and the solitary cottage, from whose doorstep might be seen in one direction the noble Mount Washington range, and in another the hardly less noble Franconias. How easy to live simply and well in such a grand seclusion! But soon there came a thought of Wordsworth's sonnet, addressed to just such a mood, "Yes, there is holy pleasure in thine eye," and I felt at once the truth of his admonition. What if the cottage really were mine,--mine to spend a lifetime in? How quickly the poetry would turn to prose!
An hour afterwards, on my way back to the Sinclair House, I passed a group of men at work on the highway. One of them was a little apart from the rest, and out of a social impulse I accosted him with the remark, "I suppose, in heaven, the streets never will need mending." Quick as thought came the reply: "Well, I hope not. If I ever _get_ there, I don't want to work on the _road_." Here spoke universal human nature, which finds its strong argument for immortality in its discontent with matters as they now are. The one thing we are all sure of is that we were born for something better than our present employment; and even those who school themselves most religiously in the virtue of contentment know very well how to define that grace so as not to exclude from it a comfortable mixture of "divine dissatisfaction." Well for us if we are still able to stand in our place and do faithfully our allotted task, like the mountain spruces and the Bethlehemite road-mender.