The is not exactly the book I thought it was going to be—though I cansay the same of its author for that matter. I had intended this bookto set forth some features of the Earth that make it to be preferred toHeaven as a place of present abode, and to note in detail the peculiarattractions of Hingham over Boston, say,—Boston being quite the bestcity on the Earth to live in. I had the book started under the title"And this Our Life"
. . . exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees,"
—when, suddenly, war broke out, the gates of Hell swung wide open intoBelgium, and Heaven began to seem the better place. Meanwhile, aseries of lesser local troubles had been brewing—drouth, caterpillars,rheumatism, increased commutation rates, more college themes,—morethan I could carry back and forth to Hingham,—so that as the writingwent on Boston began to seem, not a better place than Hingham, but anearer place, somehow, and more thoroughly sprayed.
And all this time the book on Life that I thought I was writing wasgrowing chapter by chapter into a defense of that book—a defense ofLife—my life here by my fireside with my boys and Her, and the gardenand woodlot and hens and bees, and days off and evenings at home andbooks to read, yes, and books to write—all of which I had taken forgranted at twenty, and believed in with a beautiful faith at thirty,when I moved out here into what was then an uninfected forest.
That was the time to have written the book that I had intended this oneto be—while the adventure in contentment was still an adventure, whilethe lure of the land was of fourteen acres yet unexplored, while backto the soil meant exactly what the seed catalogues picture it, and mysummer in a garden had not yet passed into its frosty fall. Instead, Ihave done what no writer ought to do, what none ever did before, unlessJacob wrote,—taken a fourteen-year-old enthusiasm for my theme, tofind the enthusiasm grown, as Rachel must have grown by the time Jacobgot her, into a philosophy, and like all philosophies, in need ofdefense.
What men live by is an interesting speculative question, but what menlive on, and where they can live,—with children to bring up, and theirown souls to save,—is an intensely practical question which I havebeen working at these fourteen years here in the Hills of Hingham.