ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT

David Grayson

I

"THE BURDEN OF THE VALLEY OF VISION"

I came here eight years ago as the renter of this farm, of which soonafterward I became the owner. The time before that I like to forget. Thechief impression it left, upon my memory, now happily growingindistinct, is of being hurried faster than I could well travel. Fromthe moment, as a boy of seventeen, I first began to pay my own way, mydays were ordered by an inscrutable power which drove me hourly to mytask. I was rarely allowed to look up or down, but always forward,toward that vague Success which we Americans love to glorify.

My senses, my nerves, even my muscles were continually strained to theutmost of attainment. If I loitered or paused by the wayside, as itseems natural for me to do, I soon heard the sharp crack of the lash.For many years, and I can say it truthfully, I never rested. I neitherthought nor reflected. I had no pleasure, even though I pursued itfiercely during the brief respite of vacations. Through many feverishyears I did not work: I merely produced.

The only real thing I did was to hurry as though every moment were mylast, as though the world, which now seems so rich in everything, heldonly one prize which might be seized upon before I arrived. Since then Ihave tried to recall, like one who struggles to restore the visions of afever, what it was that I ran to attain, or why I should have bornewithout rebellion such indignities to soul and body. That life seemsnow, of all illusions, the most distant and unreal. It is like theunguessed eternity before we are born: not of concern compared with thateternity upon which we are now embarked.

All these things happened in cities and among crowds. I like to forgetthem. They smack of that slavery of the spirit which is so much worsethan any mere slavery of the body.

One day—it was in April, I remember, and the soft maples in the citypark were just beginning to blossom—I stopped suddenly. I did notintend to stop. I confess in humiliation that it was no courage, no willof my own. I intended to go on toward Success: but Fate stopped me. Itwas as if I had been thrown violently from a moving planet: all theuniverse streamed around me and past me. It seemed to me that of allanimate creation, I was the only thing that was still or silent. Until Istopped I had not known the pace I ran; and I had a vague sympathy andunderstanding, never felt before, for those who left the running. I layprostrate with fever and close to death for weeks and watched the worldgo by: the dust, the noise, the very colour of haste. The only sharppang that I suffered was the feeling that I should be broken-hearted andthat I was not; that I should care and that I did not. It was as thoughI had died and escaped all further responsibility. I even watched withdim equanimity my friends racing past me, panting as they ran. Some ofthem paused an instant to comfort me where I lay, but I could see thattheir minds were still upon the running and I was glad when they wentaway. I cannot tell with what weariness their haste oppressed me. As forthem, they somehow blamed me for dropping o

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