Our abandoned farm is no longer ours. We, too, have abandoned it. Only the years that we spent there remain to us—a tender and beautiful memory. Whatever there was of shadow or misfortune has long since passed, by. I see now all our summers there bathed in mellow sunlight, all the autumns aglow with red and gold, all the winters clean with sparkling snow, all the springs green with breaking buds and white with bloom. If those seasons were not flawless at the time, they have become so, now when they are added to the past.
And I know that they were indeed happy, for they make my heart ache remembering, and it is happiness, and not misery, that makes the heart ache—when it is gone.