"Walking"- by Thoreau

We have been packing and cleaning all week to move my Mother this weekend. In my spare moments I have begun to re-read "Lillith" by George MacDonald
and found the following in the Preface- it is as lovely a thing as I have read in ages...next to your blog posts and comments of course :) Enjoy! (and Phos- this is especially for you- seeing how I put my glass down long enough to grant your request- lol :)

"I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the
setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its
golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble
hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable
and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called
Concord, unknown to me -- to whom the sun was servant -- who
had not gone into society in the village -- who had not been called
on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the
wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them
with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision;
the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds
of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the
sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The
farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not
in the least put them out, as the muddy bottom of a pool is
sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of
Spaulding, and do not know that he is their
neighbor -- notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his
team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their
lives. Their coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the
pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are
of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that
they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind
lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet
musical hum -- as of a distant hive in May -- which perchance was
the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one
without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots
and excrescences embayed.

But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out
of my mind even now while I speak, and endeavor to recall them
and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to
recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their
cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should
move out of Concord."

Lovely!!!