But, after all this is said, the time when I get the most solid
rest and recreation is when I can be at Tuskegee, and, after our
evening meal is over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife and
Portia and Baker and Davidson, my three children, and read a story, or
each take turns in telling a story. TO me there is nothing on earth
equal to that, although what is nearly equal to it is to go with them
for an hour or more, as we like to do on Sunday afternoons, into the
woods, where we can live for a while near the heart of nature, where
no one can disturb or vex us, surrounded by pure air, the trees, the
shrubbery, the flowers, and the sweet fragrance that springs from a
hundred plants, enjoying the chirp of the crickets and the songs of
the birds. This is solid rest.
My garden, also, what little time I can be at Tuskegee, is another
source of rest and enjoyment. Somehow I like, as often as possible,
to touch nature, not something that is artificial or an imitation, but
the real thing. When I can leave my office in time so that I can
spend thirty or forty minutes in spading the ground, in planting
seeds, in digging about the plants, I feel that I am coming into
contact with something that is giving me strength for the many duties
and hard places that await me out in the big world.
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