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Adventures In Contentment, by David Grayson
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Title: Adventures In Contentment
Author: David Grayson AKA: Ray Stannard Baker
Release Date: January 5, 2004 [EBook 10605]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT
David Grayson
I
"THE BURDEN OF THE VALLEY OF VISION"
I came here eight years ago as the renter of this farm, of which soon afterward I became the owner. The time before that I like to forget. The chief impression it left, upon my memory, now happily growing indistinct, is of being hurried faster than I could well travel. From the moment, as a boy of seventeen, I first began to pay my own way, my days were ordered by an inscrutable power which drove me hourly to my task. I was rarely allowed to look up or down, but always forward, toward that vague Success which we Americans love to glorify.
My senses, my nerves, even my muscles were continually strained to the utmost of attainment. If I loitered or paused by the wayside, as it seems natural for me to do, I soon heard the sharp crack of the lash. For many years, and I can say it tru