the anvil, for this was our living, but there was my life, so far as good books could make it, rich for me and noble in the great library again seven miles away. So what matter about the hard day's work at the anvil, while there was some new volume to read when the day's work was done or old one to read with an ever new delight. My new book or old one, with the sweet green lane in the summer time where I could walk while the birds sang their mating song, and the fragrance of the green things growing floated on the soft summer air, and the fireside in winter with the good wife busy about the room, and the little ones sleeping in their cribs, I look back to those times still and wonder whether they were not the best I ever knew. I was reading some lines the other day in an old English ballad written 300 years ago, and they told the story of those times:
