You Reckon Up The Miles That
Lie Between You And Intrusion.
You may walk before you all day
long, and not fear to touch the barrier of your Eden, or stumble
out of fairyland into the land of gin and steam-hammers.
And there
is an old tale enhances for the imagination the grandeur of the
woods of France, and secures you in the thought of your seclusion.
When Charles VI. hunted in the time of his wild boyhood near
Senlis, there was captured an old stag, having a collar of bronze
about his neck, and these words engraved on the collar: 'Caesar
mihi hoc donavit.' It is no wonder if the minds of men were moved
at this occurrence and they stood aghast to find themselves thus
touching hands with forgotten ages, and following an antiquity with
hound and horn. And even for you, it is scarcely in an idle
curiosity that you ponder how many centuries this stag had carried
its free antlers through the wood, and how many summers and winters
had shone and snowed on the imperial badge. If the extent of
solemn wood could thus safeguard a tall stag from the hunter's
hounds and houses, might not you also play hide-and-seek, in these
groves, with all the pangs and trepidations of man's life, and
elude Death, the mighty hunter, for more than the span of human
years? Here, also, crash his arrows; here, in the farthest glade,
sounds the gallop of the pale horse.
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