When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with myown hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve formy dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer duringthe intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen,fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sitdown to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself theillustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparingtheir own oxen and swine.Nothing fills me with a more pure andgenuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal lifewhich, thank Heaven I can imitate without affectation.Happy isit, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the samesimple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is coveredwith food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, butremembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when heplanted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasurehe experienced in watching its daily growth. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrianexcursions, that all heaven lay so near it.How often in mywanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river,have I beheld this huntinglodge, which now contains within it allthe joy of my heart
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