Times have changed now, you'll say, and it's true.Why, I've got nothing to do these days but to take a look at things, and I tell you I see a lot now where all was a blank before.You just glance over that old field and tell me what you find," Cynthia followed the sweep of his left arm."There's first the road, and then a piece of fallow land that ought to be ploughed," she said."Bless my soul, is that all you see? Why, there is every shade of green on earth in that old field, and almost every one of blue, except azure, which you'll find up in the sky.That little bit of white cloud, no bigger than my hand, is shaped exactly like an eagle's wing.I've watched it for an hour, and I never saw one like it.
As for that old pine on top the little knoll, if you look at it long enough you'll see that it's a great big green cross raised against the sky." "So it is, " said Cynthia, in surprise; "so it is.""Then to come nearer, look at that spray of turtlehead growing by that gray stone--the shadow it throws is as fine as thread lace, and it waves in the breeze just like the flower."" Oh, it is beautiful, and I never should have seen it.""And best of all," resumed Tucker, as if avoiding an interruption, "is that I've watched a nestful of young wrens take flight from under the eaves.There's not a play of Shakespeare's greater than that, I tell you." "And it makes you happy--just this?" asked Cynthia wistfully, as the pathos of his maimed figure drove to her heart."Well, I reckon happiness is not so much in what comes as in the way you take it," he returned, smiling."There was a time, you must remember, when I was the straightest shot of my day, and something of a lady-killer as well, if I do say it who shouldn't.I've done my part in a war and I'm not ashamed of it.I've taken the enemy's cannon under a fire hot enough to roast an ox, and I've sent more men to eternity than I like to think of; but I tell you honestly there's no battle-field under heaven worth an hour of this old bench.If I had my choice to-day, I'd rather see the flitting of those wrens than kill the biggest Yankee that ever lived.The time was when I didn't think so, but I know now that there's as much life out there in that old field as in the tightest-packed city street I ever saw--purer life, praise God, and sweeter to the taste.
