_July 11th._ The Garden of Delight! A close-shaven sward from which the tiniest bird stands up distinctly; and trees, and trees, and trees! Shrubs and vines, rose-beds, azaleas, tall altheas, clumps of iris, masses of old-fashioned lilies, tangles of honeysuckles on the fences, beds of early phlox, ragged robins, larkspur, and ferns—all things cool and quiet and sweet. In the dense shade of tall shrubs they have left me, the feathery locusts waving overhead, and before me a hitherto unsuspected vista of beauty—the long, long valley which leads to Gettysburg, with the mountains guarding it on either side. Beyond the greensward lies a beautiful bit of wilderness—ferns and wild flowers under thick-set trees; beyond that, close-shaven grass again, then a bit of clover, and a tangle out of the very heart of the woods. And everywhere are birds. And I, who have longed for the woods for years, and who have never dreamed of finding them outside of the land of Make-Believe, I am here, far off, a thousand miles from everywhere, alone with the sky and the winds and the wild mountains, in a silence of upper air! One can bear one’s body in a place like this: it doesn’t matter that it cannot run, nor walk. One’s mind can run, and fly, and rise so high that the pain lies far below, lost, vanished, like a pebble in the valley when one looks from a free mountain peak against the sky. For one glorious hour I have run away from it—this pain that wrenches and grips; I have been free, free! And so my hope grows bold, and I reach out to touch that happy future when I shall be free in body as well as in mind: it will come—some day! And oh, foolish one, remember, and learn! For the Garden of Delight was close at hand all the time, only I hadn’t the wit to reach it till my body was carried thither. But there is always a Garden, if one can find it—a Garden of Delight, hidden behind the hedge! * * * * * _July 15th._ The birds are not kind today, even here in the Garden. It is a grey evening, for one thing, and the light is bad for spying out secrets among the leaves. The weather is misty and damp, promising the rain we need; but everything is dry from recent heat, and the insects may be less juicy than usual, and not very tempting eating. Anyway, the birds are not here. The mist, with the dim light of the evening sun upon it, spreads a film of silver over the blues and greens of the mountains. Down in the valley it deepens till all the colors are faint and soft, from the pale stubble of the nearer wheatfields all up the long valley between the mountains, to where the dim blue of the great battlefield melts into the dim blue of the sky above it.