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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
62
On
fine
mornings
John
Starkweather
sometimes
comes
out
in
his
slippers,
bare-headed,
his
white
vest
gleaming
in
the
sunshine,
and
walks
slowly
around
his
garden.
Charles
Baxter
says
that
on
these
occasions
he
is
asking
his
gardener
the
names
of
the
vegetables.
However
that
may
be,
he
has
seemed
to
our
community
the
very
incarnation
of
contentment
and
prosperity--his
position
the
acme
of
desirability.
What
was
my
astonishment,
then,
the
other
morning
to
see
John
Starkweather
coming
down
the
pasture
lane
through
my
farm.
I
knew
him
afar
off,
though
I
had
never
met
him.
May
I
express
the
inexpressible
when
I
say
he
had
a
rich
look;
he
walked
rich,
there
was
richness
in
the
confident
crook
of
his
elbow,
and
in
the
positive
twitch
of
the
stick
he
carried:
a
man
accustomed
to
having
doors
opened
before
he
knocked.
I
stood
there
a
moment
and
looked
up
the
hill
at
him,
and
I
felt
that
profound
curiosity
which
every
one
of
us
feels
every
day
of
his
life
to
know
something
of
the
inner
impulses
which
stir
his
nearest
neighbour.
I
should
have
liked
to
know
John
Starkweather;
but
I
thought
to
myself
as
I
have
thought
so
many
times
how
surely
one
comes
finally
to
imitate
his
surroundings.
A
farmer
grows
to
be
a
part
of
his
farm;
the
sawdust
on
his
coat
is
not
the
most
distinctive
insignia
of
the
carpenter;
the
poet
writes
his
truest
lines
upon
his
own
countenance.
People
passing
in
my
road
take
me
to
be
a
part
of
this
natural
scene.
I
suppose
I
seem
to
them
as
a
partridge
squatting
among
dry
grass
and
leaves,
so
like
the
grass
and
leaves
as
to
be
invisible.
We
all
come
to
be
marked
upon
by
nature
and
dismissed--how
carelessly!--as
genera
or
species.
And
is
it
not
the
primal
struggle
of
man
to
escape
classification,
to
form
new
differentiations?
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