Reader! had you not ever a friend a few years older than yourself, whose good opinion you were anxious to keep? A fellow _teres atque rotundus_; who could do everything better than you, from Plato and tennis down to singing a comic song and playing quoits? If you have had, wasn’t he always in your rooms or company whenever anything happened to show your little weak points? XLVI. To come back home after every stage of life’s journeying with a wider horizon—more in sympathy with men and nature, knowing ever more of the righteous and eternal laws which govern them, and of the righteous and loving will which is above all, and around all, and beneath all, this must be the end and aim of all of us, or we shall be wandering about blind-fold, and spending time and labor and journey-money on that which profiteth nothing. XLVII. What man among us all, if he will think the matter over calmly and fairly, can honestly say that there is any spot on the earth’s surface in which he has enjoyed so much real, wholesome, happy life as in a hay field? He may have won on horseback or on foot at the sports and pastimes in which Englishmen glory; he may have shaken off all rivals, time after time, across the vales of Aylesbury, or of Berks, or any other of our famous hunting counties; he may have stalked the oldest and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of the year in the Tweed, and trout in the Thames; he may have made topping averages in first-rate matches of cricket; or have made long and perilous marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain, or glacier; he may have successfully attended many breakfast-parties within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded by all the fairy-land of pomp, and beauty, and luxury, which London can pour out; his voice may have sounded over hushed audiences at St. Stephens or in the law-courts; or he may have had good times in any other scenes of pleasure or triumph open to Englishmen; but I much doubt whether, on putting his recollections fairly and quietly together he would not say at last that the fresh-mown hay-field is the place where he has spent the most hours which he would like to live over again, the fewest which he would wish to forget.