Perhaps it was true; but the old farm yielded him
a living, and further than that Old Man Shaw had no ambition.
He was as blithe as a pilgrim on a pathway climbing to the west.
He had learned the rare secret that you must take happiness when you
find it--that there is no use in marking the place and coming back
to it at a more convenient season, because it will not be there then.
And it is very easy to be happy if you know, as Old Man Shaw
most thoroughly knew, how to find pleasure in little things.
He enjoyed life, he had always enjoyed life and helped others to enjoy it;
consequently his life was a success, whatever White Sands people
might think of it. What if he had not "improved" his farm?
There are some people to whom life will never be anything more
than a kitchen garden; and there are others to whom it will always
be a royal palace with domes and minarets of rainbow fancy.
The orchard of which he was so proud was as yet little more than
the substance of things hoped for--a flourishing plantation
of young trees which would amount to something later on.
Old Man Shaw's house was on the crest of a bare, sunny hill,
with a few staunch old firs and spruces behind it--the only trees
that could resist the full sweep of the winds that blew bitterly
up from the sea at times.
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