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diff --git a/5319-h/5319-h.htm b/5319-h/5319-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ab40e77 --- /dev/null +++ b/5319-h/5319-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2571 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pagan Papers, by Kenneth Grahame</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pagan Papers, by Kenneth Grahame</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Pagan Papers</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Kenneth Grahame</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 30, 2002 [eBook #5319]<br /> +[Most recently updated: December 26, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: William McClain</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGAN PAPERS ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>Pagan Papers</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By Kenneth Grahame</h2> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">The Romance of the Road</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">The Romance of the Rail</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">Non Libri Sed Liberi</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">Loafing</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">Cheap Knowledge</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">The Rural Pan</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">Marginalia</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">The Eternal Whither</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">Deus Terminus</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">Of Smoking</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">An Autumn Encounter</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">The White Poppy</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap13">A Bohemian in Exile</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap14">Justifiable Homicide</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap15">The Fairy Wicket</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap16">Aboard the Galley</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap17">The Lost Centaur</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap18">Orion</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>The Romance of the Road</h2> + +<p> +Among the many places of magic visited by Pantagruel and his company during the +progress of their famous voyage, few surpass that island whose roads did +literally “go” to places—<i>“ou les chemins cheminent, comme animaulx”</i>: and +would-be travellers, having inquired of the road as to its destination, and +received satisfactory reply, <i>“se guindans”</i> (as the old book hath +it—hoisting themselves up on) <i>“au chemin opportun, sans aultrement se poiner +ou fatiguer, se trouvoyent au lieu destiné.”</i> +</p> + +<p> +The best example I know of an approach to this excellent sort of vitality in +roads is the Ridgeway of the North Berkshire Downs. Join it at Streatley, the +point where it crosses the Thames; at once it strikes you out and away from the +habitable world in a splendid, purposeful manner, running along the highest +ridge of the Downs a broad green ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference +from the neighbouring grass, yet distinct for all that. No villages nor +homesteads tempt it aside or modify its course for a yard; should you lose the +track where it is blent with the bordering turf or merged in and obliterated by +criss-cross paths, you have only to walk straight on, taking heed of no +alternative to right or left; and in a minute ’tis with you again—arisen out of +the earth as it were. Or, if still not quite assured, lift you your eyes, and +there it runs over the brow of the fronting hill. Where a railway crosses it, +it disappears indeed—hiding Alpheus-like, from the ignominy of rubble and +brick-work; but a little way on it takes up the running again with the same +quiet persistence. Out on that almost trackless expanse of billowy Downs such a +track is in some sort humanly companionable: it really seems to lead you by the +hand. +</p> + +<p> +The “Rudge” is of course an exceptional instance; but indeed this pleasant +personality in roads is not entirely fanciful. It exists as a characteristic of +the old country road, evolved out of the primitive prehistoric track, +developing according to the needs of the land it passes through and serves: +with a language, accordingly, and a meaning of its own. Its special services +are often told clearly enough; but much else too of the quiet story of the +country-side: something of the old tale whereof you learn so little from the +printed page. Each is instinct, perhaps, with a separate suggestion. Some are +martial and historic, and by your side the hurrying feet of the dead raise a +ghostly dust. The name of yon town—with its Roman or Saxon suffix to British +root—hints at much. Many a strong man, wanting his <i>vates sacer,</i> passed +silently to Hades for that suffix to obtain. The little rise up yonder on the +Downs that breaks their straight green line against the sky showed another +sight when the sea of battle surged and beat on its trampled sides; and the +Roman, sore beset, may have gazed down this very road for relief, praying for +night or the succouring legion. This child that swings on a gate and peeps at +you from under her sun-bonnet—so may some girl-ancestress of hers have watched +with beating heart the Wessex levies hurry along to clash with the heathen and +break them on the down where the ash trees grew. And yonder, where the road +swings round under gloomy overgrowth of drooping boughs—is that gleam of water +or glitter of lurking spears? +</p> + +<p> +Some sing you pastorals, fluting low in the hot sun between dusty hedges +overlooked by contented cows; past farmsteads where man and beast, living in +frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceable lessons each of the other; +over the full-fed river, lipping the meadow-sweet, and thence on either side +through leagues of hay. Or through bending corn they chant the mystical +wonderful song of the reaper when the harvest is white to the sickle. But most +of them, avoiding classification, keep each his several tender significance; as +with one I know, not so far from town, which woos you from the valley by gentle +ascent between nut-laden hedges, and ever by some touch of keen fragrance in +the air, by some mystery of added softness under foot—ever a promise of +something to come, unguessed, delighting. Till suddenly you are among the +pines, their keen scent strikes you through and through, their needles carpet +the ground, and in their swaying tops moans the unappeasable wind—sad, +ceaseless, as the cry of a warped humanity. Some paces more, and the promise is +fulfilled, the hints and whisperings become fruition: the ground breaks steeply +away, and you look over a great inland sea of fields, homesteads, rolling +woodland, and—bounding all, blent with the horizon, a greyness, a gleam—the +English Channel. A road of promises, of hinted surprises, following each other +with the inevitable sequence in a melody. +</p> + +<p> +But we are now in another and stricter sense an island of <i>chemins qui +cheminent:</i> dominated, indeed, by them. By these the traveller, veritably +<i>se guindans,</i> may reach his destination <i>“sans se poiner ou se +fatiguer”</i> (with large qualifications); but <i>sans</i> very much else +whereof he were none the worse. The gain seems so obvious that you forget to +miss all that lay between the springing stride of the early start and the +pleasant weariness of the end approached, when the limbs lag a little as the +lights of your destination begin to glimmer through the dusk. All that lay +between! “A Day’s Ride a Life’s Romance” was the excellent title of an +unsuccessful book; and indeed the journey should march with the day, beginning +and ending with its sun, to be the complete thing, the golden round, required +of it. This makes that mind and body fare together, hand in hand, sharing the +hope, the action, the fruition; finding equal sweetness in the languor of +aching limbs at eve and in the first god-like intoxication of motion with +braced muscle in the sun. For walk or ride take the mind over greater distances +than a throbbing whirl with stiffening joints and cramped limbs through a dozen +counties. Surely you seem to cover vaster spaces with Lavengro, footing it with +gipsies or driving his tinker’s cart across lonely commons, than with many a +globe-trotter or steam-yachtsman with diary or log? And even that dividing +line—strictly marked and rarely overstepped—between the man who bicycles and +the man who walks, is less due to a prudent regard for personal safety of the +one part than to an essential difference in minds. +</p> + +<p> +There is a certain supernal, a deific, state of mind which may indeed be +experienced in a minor degree, by any one, in the siesta part of a Turkish +bath. But this particular golden glow of the faculties is only felt at its +fulness after severe and prolonged exertion in the open air. “A man ought to be +seen by the gods,” says Marcus Aurelius, “neither dissatisfied with anything, +nor complaining.” Though this does not sound at first hearing an excessive +demand to make of humanity, yet the gods, I fancy, look long and often for such +a sight in these unblest days of hurry. If ever seen at all, ’tis when after +many a mile in sun and wind—maybe rain—you reach at last, with the folding +star, your destined rustic inn. There, in its homely, comfortable strangeness, +after unnumbered chops with country ale, the hard facts of life begin to swim +in a golden mist. You are isled from accustomed cares and worries—you are set +in a peculiar nook of rest. Then old failures seem partial successes, then old +loves come back in their fairest form, but this time with never a shadow of +regret, then old jokes renew their youth and flavour. You ask nothing of the +gods above, nothing of men below—not even their company. To-morrow you shall +begin life again: shall write your book, make your fortune, do anything; +meanwhile you sit, and the jolly world swings round, and you seem to hear it +circle to the music of the spheres. What pipe was ever thus beatifying in +effect? You are aching all over, and enjoying it; and the scent of the limes +drifts in through the window. This is undoubtedly the best and greatest country +in the world; and none but good fellows abide in it. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + Laud we the Gods,<br/> +And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils<br/> +From our blest altars.<br/> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>The Romance of the Rail</h2> + +<p> +In these iron days of the dominance of steam, the crowning wrong that is +wrought us of furnace and piston-rod lies in their annihilation of the +steadfast mystery of the horizon, so that the imagination no longer begins to +work at the point where vision ceases. In happier times, three hundred years +ago, the seafarers from Bristol City looked out from the prows of their vessels +in the grey of the morning, and wot not rightly whether the land they saw might +be Jerusalem or Madagascar, or if it were not North and South America. “And +there be certaine flitting islands,” says one, “which have been oftentimes +seene, and when men approached near them they vanished.” “It may be that the +gulfs will wash us down,” said Ulysses (thinking of what Americans call the +“getting-off place”); “it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.” And so on, +and so on; each with his special hope or “wild surmise.” There was always a +chance of touching the Happy Isles. And in that first fair world whose men and +manners we knew through story-books, before experience taught us far other, the +Prince mounts his horse one fine morning, and rides all day, and sleeps in a +forest; and next morning, lo! a new country: and he rides by fields and granges +never visited before, through faces strange to him, to where an unknown King +steps down to welcome the mysterious stranger. And he marries the Princess, and +dwells content for many a year; till one day he thinks “I will look upon my +father’s face again, though the leagues be long to my own land.” And he rides +all day, and sleeps in a forest; and next morning he is made welcome at home, +where his name has become a dim memory. Which is all as it should be; for, +annihilate time and space as you may, a man’s stride remains the true standard +of distance; an eternal and unalterable scale. The severe horizon, too, repels +the thoughts as you gaze to the infinite considerations that lie about, within +touch and hail; and the night cometh, when no man can work. +</p> + +<p> +To all these natural bounds and limitations it is good to get back now and +again, from a life assisted and smooth by artificialities. Where iron has +superseded muscle, the kindly life-blood is apt to throb dull as the measured +beat of the steam-engine. But the getting back to them is now a matter of +effort, of set purpose, a stepping aside out of our ordinary course; they are +no longer unsought influences towards the making of character. So perhaps the +time of them has gone by, here in this second generation of steam. <i>Pereunt +et imputantur;</i> they pass away, and are scored against not us but our guilty +fathers. For ourselves, our peculiar slate is probably filling fast. The +romance of the steam-engine is yet to be captured and expressed—not fully nor +worthily, perhaps, until it too is a vanished regret; though Emerson for one +will not have it so, and maintains and justifies its right to immediate +recognition as poetic material. “For as it is dislocation and detachment from +the life of God that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to +Nature and the whole—re-attaching even artificial things and violations of +Nature to Nature by a deeper insight—disposes very easily of the most +disagreeable facts”; so that he looks upon “the factory village and the +railway” and “sees them fall within the great Order not less than the bee-hive +or the spider’s geometrical web.” The poet, however, seems hard to convince +hereof. Emerson will have it that “Nature loves the gliding train of cars”; +“instead of which” the poet still goes about the country singing purling +brooks. Painters have been more flexible and liberal. Turner saw and did his +best to seize the spirit of the thing, its kinship with the elements, and to +blend furnace-glare and rush of iron with the storm-shower, the wind and the +thwart-flashing sun-rays, and to make the whole a single expression of +irresoluble force. And even in a certain work by another and a very different +painter—though I willingly acquit Mr Frith of any deliberate romantic +intention—you shall find the element of romance in the vestiges of the old +order still lingering in the first transition period: the coach-shaped railway +carriages with luggage piled and corded on top, the red-coated guard, the +little engine tethered well ahead as if between traces. To those bred within +sight of the sea, steamers will always partake in somewhat of the “beauty and +mystery of the ships”; above all, if their happy childhood have lain among the +gleaming lochs and sinuous firths of the Western Highlands, where, twice a week +maybe, the strange visitant crept by headland and bay, a piece of the busy, +mysterious outer world. For myself, I probably stand alone in owning to a +sentimental weakness for the night-piercing whistle—judiciously remote, as some +men love the skirl of the pipes. In the days when streets were less wearily +familiar than now, or ever the golden cord was quite loosed that led back to +relinquished fields and wider skies, I have lain awake on stifling summer +nights, thinking of luckier friends by moor and stream, and listening for the +whistles from certain railway stations, veritable “horns of Elf-land, faintly +blowing.” Then, a ghostly passenger, I have taken my seat in a phantom train, +and sped up, up, through the map, rehearsing the journey bit by bit: through +the furnace-lit Midlands, and on till the grey glimmer of dawn showed stone +walls in place of hedges, and masses looming up on either side; till the bright +sun shone upon brown leaping streams and purple heather, and the clear, sharp +northern air streamed in through the windows. Return, indeed, was bitter; +Endymion-like, “my first touch of the earth went nigh to kill”: but it was only +to hurry northwards again on the wings of imagination, from dust and heat to +the dear mountain air. “We are only the children who might have been,” murmured +Lamb’s dream babes to him; and for the sake of those dream-journeys, the +journeys that might have been, I still hail with a certain affection the call +of the engine in the night: even as I love sometimes to turn the enchanted +pages of the railway a b c, and pass from one to the other name reminiscent or +suggestive of joy and freedom, Devonian maybe, or savouring of Wessex, or +bearing me away to some sequestered reach of the quiet Thames. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>Non Libri Sed Liberi</h2> + +<p> +It will never be clear to the lay mind why the book-buyer buys books. That it +is not to read them is certain: the closest inspection always fails to find him +thus engaged. He will talk about them—all night if you let him—wave his hand to +them, shake his fist at them, shed tears over them (in the small hours of the +morning); but he will not read them. Yet it would be rash to infer that he buys +his books without a remote intention of ever reading them. Most book lovers +start with the honest resolution that some day they will “shut down on” this +fatal practice. Then they purpose to themselves to enter into their charmed +circle, and close the gates of Paradise behind them. Then will they read out of +nothing but first editions; every day shall be a debauch in large paper and +tall copies; and crushed morocco shall be familiar to their touch as buckram. +Meanwhile, though, books continue to flaunt their venal charms; it would be +cowardice to shun the fray. In fine, one buys and continues to buy; and the +promised Sabbath never comes. +</p> + +<p> +The process of the purchase is always much the same, therein resembling the +familiar but inferior passion of love. There is the first sight of the Object, +accompanied of a catching of the breath, a trembling in the limbs, loss of +appetite, ungovernable desire, and a habit of melancholy in secret places. But +once possessed, once toyed with amorously for an hour or two, the Object (as in +the inferior passion aforesaid) takes its destined place on the shelf—where it +stays. And this saith the scoffer, is all; but even he does not fail to remark +with a certain awe that the owner goeth thereafter as one possessing a happy +secret and radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he is insufferably conceited, and +his conceit waxeth as his coat, now condemned to a fresh term of servitude, +groweth shabbier. And shabby though his coat may be, yet will he never stoop to +renew its pristine youth and gloss by the price of any book. No man—no human, +masculine, natural man—ever sells a book. Men have been known in moments of +thoughtlessness, or compelled by temporary necessity, to rob, to equivocate, to +do murder, to commit what they should not, to “wince and relent and refrain” +from what they should: these things, howbeit regrettable, are common to +humanity, and may happen to any of us. But amateur bookselling is foul and +unnatural; and it is noteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity, +contains no distinctive name for the crime. Fortunately it is hardly known to +exist: the face of the public being set against it as a flint—and the trade +giving such wretched prices. +</p> + +<p> +In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by the reflection +that this particular purchase will be a good investment, sordidly considered: +that you are not squandering income but sinking capital. But you know all the +time that you are lying. Once possessed, books develop a personality: they take +on a touch of warm human life that links them in a manner with our kith and +kin. <i>Non angli sed Angeli</i> was the comment of a missionary (old style) on +the small human duodecimos exposed for sale in the Roman market-place; and many +a buyer, when some fair-haired little chattel passed into his possession, must +have felt that here was something vendible no more. So of these you may well +affirm <i>Non libri sed liberi;</i> children now, adopted into the circle, they +shall be trafficked in never again. +</p> + +<p> +There is one exception which has sadly to be made—one class of men, of whom I +would fain, if possible, have avoided mention, who are strangers to any such +scruples. These be Executors—a word to be strongly accented on the penultimate; +for, indeed, they are the common headsmen of collections, and most of all do +whet their bloody edge for harmless books. Hoary, famous old collections, +budding young collections, fair virgin collections of a single author—all go +down before the executor’s remorseless axe. He careth not and he spareth not. +“The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy,” and it is chiefly by +the hand of the executor that she doth love to scatter it. May oblivion be his +portion for ever! +</p> + +<p> +Of a truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few. One of the most insidious, +because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, is the bookbinder. Not +in that he bindeth books—for the fair binding is the final crown and flower of +painful achievement—but because he bindeth not: because the weary weeks lapse +by and turn to months, and the months to years, and still the binder bindeth +not: and the heart grows sick with hope deferred. Each morn the maiden binds +her hair, each spring the honeysuckle binds the cottage-porch, each autumn the +harvester binds his sheaves, each winter the iron frost binds lake and stream, +and still the bookbinder he bindeth not. Then a secret voice whispereth: +“Arise, be a man, and slay him! Take him grossly, full of bread, with all his +crimes broad-blown, as flush as May; At gaming, swearing, or about some act +That hath no relish of salvation in it!” But when the deed is done, and the +floor strewn with fragments of binder—still the books remain unbound. You have +made all that horrid mess for nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden +over again. As a general rule, the man in the habit of murdering bookbinders, +though he performs a distinct service to society, only wastes his own time and +takes no personal advantage. +</p> + +<p> +And even supposing that after many days your books return to you in leathern +surcoats bravely tricked with gold, you have scarce yet weathered the Cape and +sailed into halcyon seas. For these books—well, you kept them many weeks before +binding them, that the oleaginous printer’s-ink might fully dry before the +necessary hammering; you forbore to open the pages, that the autocratic binder +might refold the sheets if he pleased; and now that all is over—<i>consummatum +est</i>—still you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of a quiet mind. For these +purple emperors are not to be read in bed, nor during meals, nor on the grass +with a pipe on Sundays; and these brief periods are all the whirling times +allow you for solid serious reading. Still, after all, you have them; you can +at least pulverise your friends with the sight; and what have they to show +against them? Probably some miserable score or so of half-bindings, such as +lead you scornfully to quote the hackneyed couplet concerning the poor Indian +whose untutored mind clothes him before but leaves him bare behind. Let us +thank the gods that such things are: that to some of us they give not poverty +nor riches but a few good books in whole bindings. Dowered with these and (if +it be vouchsafed) a cup of Burgundy that is sound even if it be not old, we can +leave to others the foaming grape of Eastern France that was vintaged in ’74, +and with it the whole range of shilling shockers,—the Barmecidal feast of the +purposeful novelist—yea, even the countless series that tell of Eminent Women +and Successful Men. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>Loafing</h2> + +<p> +When the golden Summer has rounded languidly to his close, when Autumn has been +carried forth in russet winding-sheet, then all good fellows who look upon +holidays as a chief end of life return from moor and stream and begin to take +stock of gains and losses. And the wisest, realising that the time of action is +over while that of reminiscence has begun, realise too that the one is pregnant +with greater pleasures than the other—that action, indeed, is only the means to +an end of reflection and appreciation. Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apart +supreme. For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, goes straight +to it at once; and his happy summer has accordingly been spent in those +subjective pleasures of the mind whereof the others, the men of muscle and +peeled faces, are only just beginning to taste. +</p> + +<p> +And yet though he may a little despise (or rather pity) them, the Loafer does +not dislike nor altogether shun them. Far from it: they are very necessary to +him. For <i>“Suave mari magno”</i> is the motto of your true Loafer; and it is +chiefly by keeping ever in view the struggles and the clamorous jostlings of +the unenlightened making holiday that he is able to realise the bliss of his +own condition and maintain his self-satisfaction at boiling-point. And so is he +never very far away from the track beaten by the hurrying Philistine hoof, but +hovers more or less on the edge of it, where, the sole fixed star amidst +whirling constellations, he may watch the mad world “glance, and nod, and hurry +by.” +</p> + +<p> +There are many such centres of contemplation along the West Coast of Scotland. +Few places are better loafing-ground than a pier, with its tranquil “lucid +interval” between steamers, the ever recurrent throb of paddle-wheel, the rush +and foam of beaten water among the piles, splash of ropes and rumble of +gangways, and all the attendant hurry and scurry of the human morrice. Here, +<i>tanquam in speculo,</i> the Loafer as he lounges may, by attorney as it +were, touch gently every stop in the great organ of the emotions of mortality. +Rapture of meeting, departing woe, love at first sight, disdain, laughter, +indifference—he may experience them all, but attenuated and as if he saw them +in a dream; as if, indeed, he were Heine’s god in dream on a mountain-side. Let +the drowsy deity awake and all these puppets, emanations of his dream, will +vanish into the nothing whence they came. And these emotions may be renewed +each morning; if a fair one sail to-day, be sure that one as fair will land +to-morrow. The supply is inexhaustible. +</p> + +<p> +But in the South perhaps the happiest loafing-ground is the gift of Father +Thames; for there again the contrast of violent action, with its blisters, +perspiration, and the like, throws into fine relief the bliss of “quietism.” I +know one little village in the upper reaches where loafing may be pushed to +high perfection. Here the early hours of the morning are vexed by the voices of +boaters making their way down the little street to the river. The most of them +go staggering under hampers, bundles of waterproofs, and so forth. Their voices +are clamant of feats to be accomplished: they will row, they will punt, they +will paddle, till they weary out the sun. All this the Loafer hears through the +open door of his cottage, where in his shirt-sleeves he is dallying with his +bacon, as a gentleman should. He is the only one who has had a comfortable +breakfast—and he knows it. Later he will issue forth and stroll down in their +track to the bridge. The last of these Argonauts is pulling lustily forth; the +river is dotted with evanishing blazers. Upon all these lunatics a pitiless +Phoebus shines triumphant. The Loafer sees the last of them off the stage, +turns his back on it, and seeks the shady side of the street. +</p> + +<p> +A holy calm possesses the village now; the foreign element has passed away with +shouting and waving of banners, and its natural life of somnolency is in +evidence at last. And first, as a true Loafer should, let him respectfully +greet each several village dog. <i>Arcades ambo</i>—loafers likewise—they lie +there in the warm dust, each outside his own door, ready to return the smallest +courtesy. Their own lords and masters are not given to the exchange of +compliments nor to greetings in the market-place. The dog is generally the +better gentleman, and he is aware of it; and he duly appreciates the loafer, +who is not too proud to pause a moment, change the news, and pass the time of +day. He will mark his sense of this attention by rising from his dust-divan and +accompanying his caller some steps on his way. But he will stop short of his +neighbour’s dust-patch; for the morning is really too hot for a shindy. So, by +easy stages (the street is not a long one: six dogs will see it out), the +Loafer quits the village; and now the world is before him. Shall he sit on a +gate and smoke? or lie on the grass and smoke? or smoke aimlessly and at large +along the road? Such a choice of happiness is distracting; but perhaps the last +course is the best—as needing the least mental effort of selection. Hardly, +however, has he fairly started his first daydream when the snappish “ting” of a +bellkin recalls him to realities. By comes the bicyclist: dusty, sweating, a +piteous thing to look upon. But the irritation of the strepitant metal has +jarred the Loafer’s always exquisite nerves: he is fain to climb a gate and +make his way towards solitude and the breezy downs. +</p> + +<p> +Up here all vestiges of a sordid humanity disappear. The Loafer is alone with +the south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling of larks and a tinkling +from distant flocks break the brooding noonday stillness; above, the wind-hover +hangs motionless, a black dot on the blue. Prone on his back on the springy +turf, gazing up into the sky, his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the +spirit ranges at will among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. +Earth no longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so +below him the thing still “spins like a fretful midge.” The Loafer knows not +nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through golden spaces of imagination +his soul is winging her untrammelled flight. And there he really might remain +for ever, but that his vagrom spirit is called back to earth by a gentle but +resistless, very human summons,—a gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian, god-like, +thirst: a thirst to thank Heaven on. So, with a sigh half of regret, half of +anticipation, he bends his solitary steps towards the nearest inn. Tobacco for +one is good; to commune with oneself and be still is truest wisdom; but beer is +a thing of deity—beer is divine. +</p> + +<p> +Later the Loafer may decently make some concession to popular taste by +strolling down to the river and getting out his boat. With one paddle out he +will drift down the stream: just brushing the flowering rush and the +meadow-sweet and taking in as peculiar gifts the varied sweets of even. The +loosestrife is his, and the arrow-head: his the distant moan of the weir; his +are the glories, amber and scarlet and silver, of the sunset-haunted surface. +By-and-by the boaters will pass him homeward-bound. All are blistered and sore: +his withers are unwrung. Most are too tired and hungry to see the sunset +glories; no corporeal pangs clog his <i>æsthesis</i>—his perceptive faculty. +Some have quarrelled in the day and are no longer on speaking terms; he is at +peace with himself and with the whole world. Of all that lay them down in the +little village that night, his sleep will be the surest and the sweetest. For +not even the blacksmith himself will have better claim to have earned a night’s +repose. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>Cheap Knowledge</h2> + +<p> +When at times it happens to me that I ’gin to be aweary of the sun, and to find +the fair apple of life dust and ashes at the core—just because, perhaps, I +can’t afford Melampus Brown’s last volume of poems in large paper, but must +perforce condescend upon the two-and-sixpenny edition for the million—then I +bring myself to a right temper by recalling to memory a sight which now and +again in old days would touch the heart of me to a happier pulsation. In the +long, dark winter evenings, outside some shop window whose gaslight flared +brightest into the chilly street, I would see some lad—sometimes even a +girl—book in hand, heedless of cold and wet, of aching limbs and straining +eyes, careless of jostling passers-by, of rattle and turmoil behind them and +about, their happy spirits far in an enchanted world: till the ruthless shopman +turned out the gas and brought them rudely back to the bitter reality of +cramped legs and numbed fingers. “My brother!” or “My sister!” I would cry +inwardly, feeling the link that bound us together. They possessed, for the +hour, the two gifts most precious to the student—light and solitude: the true +solitude of the roaring street. +</p> + +<p> +Somehow this vision rarely greets me now. Probably the Free Libraries have +supplanted the flickering shop lights; and every lad and lass can enter and +call for Miss Braddon and batten thereon “in luxury’s sofa-lap of leather”; and +of course this boon is appreciated and profited by, and we shall see the divine +results in a year or two. And yet sometimes, like the dear old Baron in the +“Red Lamp,” “I wonder?” +</p> + +<p> +For myself, public libraries possess a special horror, as of lonely wastes and +dragon-haunted fens. The stillness and the heavy air, the feeling of +restriction and surveillance, the mute presence of these other readers, “all +silent and all damned,” combine to set up a nervous irritation fatal to quiet +study. Had I to choose, I would prefer the windy street. And possibly others +have found that the removal of checks and obstacles makes the path which leads +to the divine mountain-tops less tempting, now that it is less rugged. So full +of human nature are we all—still—despite the Radical missionaries that labour +in the vineyard. Before the National Gallery was extended and rearranged, there +was a little “St Catherine” by Pinturicchio that possessed my undivided +affections. In those days she hung near the floor, so that those who would +worship must grovel; and little I grudged it. Whenever I found myself near +Trafalgar Square with five minutes to spare I used to turn in and sit on the +floor before the object of my love, till gently but firmly replaced on my legs +by the attendant. She hangs on the line now, in the grand new room; but I never +go to see her. Somehow she is not my “St Catherine” of old. Doubtless Free +Libraries affect many students in the same way: on the same principle as that +now generally accepted—that it is the restrictions placed on vice by our social +code which make its pursuit so peculiarly agreeable. +</p> + +<p> +But even when the element of human nature has been fully allowed for, it +remains a question whether the type of mind that a generation or two of Free +Libraries will evolve is or is not the one that the world most desiderates; and +whether the spare reading and consequent fertile thinking necessitated by the +old, or gas-lamp, style is not productive of sounder results. The cloyed and +congested mind resulting from the free run of these grocers’ shops to +omnivorous appetites (and all young readers are omnivorous) bids fair to +produce a race of literary resurrection-men: a result from which we may well +pray to be spared. Of all forms of lettered effusiveness that which exploits +the original work of others and professes to supply us with right opinions +thereanent is the least wanted. And whether he take to literary expression by +pen or only wag the tongue of him, the grocer’s boy of letters is sure to prove +a prodigious bore. The Free Library, if it be fulfilling the programme of its +advocates, is breeding such as he by scores. +</p> + +<p> +But after all there is balm in Gilead; and much joy and consolation may be +drawn from the sorrowful official reports, by which it would appear that the +patrons of these libraries are confining their reading, with a charming +unanimity, exclusively to novels. And indeed they cannot do better; there is no +more blessed thing on earth than a good novel, not the least merit of which is +that it induces a state of passive, unconscious enjoyment, and never frenzies +the reader to go out and put the world right. Next to fairy tales—the original +world-fiction—our modern novels may be ranked as our most precious possessions; +and so it has come to pass that I shall now cheerfully pay my five shillings, +or ten shillings, or whatever it may shortly be, in the pound towards the Free +Library: convinced at last that the money is not wasted in training exponents +of the subjectivity of this writer and the objectivity of that, nor in +developing fresh imitators of dead discredited styles, but is righteously +devoted to the support of wholesome, honest, unpretending novel-reading. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>The Rural Pan</h2> + +<h3>(An April Essay)</h3> + +<p> +Through shady Throgmorton Street and about the vale of Cheapside the restless +Mercury is flitting, with furtive eye and voice a little hoarse from bidding in +the market. Further west, down classic Piccadilly, moves the young Apollo, the +lord of the unerring (satin) bow; and nothing meaner than a frock-coat shall in +these latter years float round his perfect limbs. But remote in other haunts +than these the rural Pan is hiding, and piping the low, sweet strain that +reaches only the ears of a chosen few. And now that the year wearily turns and +stretches herself before the perfect waking, the god emboldened begins to blow +a clearer note. +</p> + +<p> +When the waking comes at last, and Summer is abroad, these deities will abroad +too, each as his several attributes move him. Who is this that flieth up the +reaches of the Thames in steam-launch hired for the day? Mercury is out—some +dozen or fifteen strong. The flower-gemmed banks crumble and slide down under +the wash of his rampant screw; his wake is marked by a line of lobster-claws, +gold-necked bottles, and fragments of veal-pie. Resplendent in blazer, he may +even be seen to embrace the slim-waisted nymph, haunter of green (room) shades, +in the full gaze of the shocked and scandalised sun. Apollo meantime reposeth, +passively beautiful, on the lawn of the Guards’ Club at Maidenhead. Here, O +Apollo, are haunts meet for thee. A deity subjectively inclined, he is neither +objective nor, it must be said for him, at all objectionable, like them of +Mercury. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, nor launches nor lawns tempt him that pursueth the rural Pan. In the +hushed recesses of Hurley backwater where the canoe may be paddled almost under +the tumbling comb of the weir, he is to be looked for; there the god pipes with +freest abandonment. Or under the great shadow of Streatley Hill, “annihilating +all that’s made to a green thought in a green shade”; or better yet, pushing an +explorer’s prow up the remote untravelled Thame, till Dorchester’s stately roof +broods over the quiet fields. In solitudes such as these Pan sits and dabbles, +and all the air is full of the music of his piping. Southwards, again, on the +pleasant Surrey downs there is shouting and jostling; dust that is drouthy and +language that is sultry. Thither comes the young Apollo, calmly confident as +ever; and he meeteth certain Mercuries of the baser sort, who do him obeisance, +call him captain and lord, and then proceed to skin him from head to foot as +thoroughly as the god himself flayed Marsyas in days of yore, at a certain +Spring Meeting in Phrygia: a good instance of Time’s revenges. And yet Apollo +returns to town and swears he has had a grand day. He does so every year. Out +of hearing of all the clamour, the rural Pan may be found stretched on Ranmore +Common, loitering under Abinger pines, or prone by the secluded stream of the +sinuous Mole, abounding in friendly greetings for his foster-brothers the +dab-chick and water-rat. +</p> + +<p> +For a holiday, Mercury loveth the Pullman Express, and a short hour with a +society paper; anon, brown boots on the pier, and the pleasant combination of +Métropole and Monopole. Apollo for his part will urge the horses of the Sun: +and, if he leaveth the society weekly to Mercury, yet he loveth well the +Magazine. From which <i>omphalos</i> or hub of the universe he will direct his +shining team even to the far Hesperides of Richmond or of Windsor. Both iron +road and level highway are shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses rather to foot +it along the sheep track on the limitless downs or the thwart-leading footpath +through copse and spinney, not without pleasant fellowship with feather and +fir. Nor does it follow from all this that the god is unsocial. Albeit shy of +the company of his more showy brother-deities, he loveth the more unpretentious +humankind, especially them that are <i>adscripti glebæ,</i> addicted to the +kindly soil and to the working thereof: perfect in no way, only simple, cheery +sinners. For he is only half a god after all, and the red earth in him is +strong. When the pelting storm drives the wayfarers to the sheltering inn, +among the little group on bench and settle Pan has been known to appear at +times, in homely guise of hedger-and-ditcher or weather-beaten shepherd from +the downs. Strange lore and quaint fancy he will then impart, in the musical +Wessex or Mercian he has learned to speak so naturally; though it may not be +till many a mile away that you begin to suspect that you have unwittingly +talked with him who chased the flying Syrinx in Arcady and turned the tide of +fight at Marathon. +</p> + +<p> +Yes: to-day the iron horse has searched the country through—east and west, +north and south—bringing with it Commercialism, whose god is Jerry, and who +studs the hills with stucco and garrotes the streams with the girder. Bringing, +too, into every nook and corner fashion and chatter, the tailor-made gown and +the eyeglass. Happily a great part is still spared—how great these others +fortunately do not know—in which the rural Pan and his following may hide their +heads for yet a little longer, until the growing tyranny has invaded the last +common, spinney, and sheep-down, and driven the kindly god, the well-wisher to +man—whither? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>Marginalia</h2> + +<p> +American Hunt, in his suggestive “Talks about Art,” demands that the child +shall be encouraged—or rather permitted, for the natural child needs little +encouragement—to draw when- and whereon-soever he can; for, says he, the +child’s scribbling on the margin of his school-books is really worth more to +him than all he gets out of them, and indeed, “to him the margin is the best +part of all books, and he finds in it the soothing influence of a clear sky in +a landscape.” Doubtless Sir Benjamin Backbite, though his was not an artist +soul, had some dim feeling of this mighty truth when he spoke of that new +quarto of his, in which “a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow +of margin”: boldly granting the margin to be of superior importance to the +print. This metaphor is pleasantly expanded in Burton’s “Bookhunter”: wherein +you read of certain folios with “their majestic stream of central print +overflowing into rivulets of marginal notes, <i>sedgy with citations.</i>” But +the good Doctor leaves the main stream for a backwater of error in inferring +that the chief use of margins is to be a parading-ground for notes and +citations. As if they had not absolute value in themselves, nor served a finer +end! In truth, Hunt’s child was vastly the wiser man. +</p> + +<p> +For myself, my own early margins chiefly served to note, cite, and illustrate +the habits of crocodiles. Along the lower or “tail” edge, the saurian, +splendidly serrated as to his back, arose out of old Nile; up one side negroes, +swart as sucked lead-pencil could limn them, let fall their nerveless spears; +up the other, monkeys, gibbering with terror, swarmed hastily up palm-trees—a +plant to the untutored hand of easier outline than (say) your British oak. +Meanwhile, all over the unregarded text Balbus slew Caius on the most +inadequate provocation, or Hannibal pursued his victorious career, while Roman +generals delivered ornate set speeches prior to receiving the usual +satisfactory licking. Fabius, Hasdrubal—all alike were pallid shades with +faint, thin voices powerless to pierce the distance. The margins of Cocytus +doubtless knew them: mine were dedicated to the more attractive flesh and blood +of animal life, the varied phases of the tropic forest. Or, in more practical +mood, I would stoop to render certain facts recorded in the text. To these +digressions I probably owe what little education I possess. For example, there +was one sentence in our Roman history: “By this single battle of Magnesia, +Antiochus the Great lost all his conquests in Asia Minor.” Serious historians +really should not thus forget themselves. ’Twas so easy, by a touch of the pen, +to transform “battle” into “bottle”; for “conquests” one could substitute a +word for which not even Macaulay’s school-boy were at a loss; and the result, +depicted with rude vigour in his margin, fixed the name of at least one ancient +fight on the illustrator’s memory. But this plodding and material art had small +charm for me: to whom the happy margin was a “clear sky” ever through which I +could sail away at will to more gracious worlds. I was duly qualified by a +painfully acquired ignorance of dead languages cautiously to approach my own; +and ’twas no better. Along Milton’s margins the Gryphon must needs pursue the +Arimaspian—what a chance, that Arimaspian, for the imaginative pencil! And so +it has come about that, while Milton periods are mostly effaced from memory by +the sponge of Time, I can still see that vengeful Gryphon, cousin-german to the +gentle beast that danced the Lobster Quadrille by a certain shore. +</p> + +<p> +It is by no means insisted upon that the chief end and use of margins is for +pictorial illustration, nor yet for furtive games of oughts and crosses, nor +(in the case of hymn-books) for amorous missives scrawled against the canticle +for the day, to be passed over into an adjacent pew: as used, alas! to happen +in days when one was young and godless, and went to church. Nor, again, are the +margins of certain poets entrusted to man for the composing thereon of +infinitely superior rhymes on the subjects themselves have maltreated: a +depraved habit, akin to scalping. What has never been properly recognised is +the absolute value of the margin itself—a value frequently superior to its +enclosure. In poetry the popular taste demands its margin, and takes care to +get it in “the little verses wot they puts inside the crackers.” The special +popularity, indeed, of lyric as opposed to epic verse is due to this habit of +feeling. A good example maybe found in the work of Mr Swinburne: the latter is +the better poetry, the earlier remains the more popular—because of its +eloquence of margin. Mr Tupper might long ago have sat with laureate brow but +for his neglect of this first principle. The song of Sigurd, our one epic of +the century, is pitiably unmargined, and so has never won the full meed of +glory it deserves; while the ingenious gentleman who wrote “Beowulf,” our other +English epic, grasped the great fact from the first, so that his work is much +the more popular of the two. The moral is evident. An authority on practical +book-making has stated that “margin is a matter to be studied”; also that “to +place the print in the centre of the paper is wrong in principle, and to be +deprecated.” Now, if it be “wrong in principle,” let us push that principle to +its legitimate conclusion, and “deprecate” the placing of print on any part of +the paper at all. Without actually suggesting this course to any of our living +bards, when, I may ask—when shall that true poet arise who, disdaining the +trivialities of text, shall give the world a book of verse consisting entirely +of margin? How we shall shove and jostle for large paper copies! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>The Eternal Whither</h2> + +<p> +There was once an old cashier in some ancient City establishment, whose +practice was to spend his yearly holiday in relieving some turnpike-man at his +post, and performing all the duties appertaining thereunto. This was vulgarly +taken to be an instance of mere mill-horse enslavement to his groove—the +reception of payments; and it was spoken of both in mockery of all mill-horses +and for the due admonishment of others. And yet that clerk had discovered for +himself an unique method of seeing Life at its best, the flowing, hurrying, +travelling, marketing Life of the Highway; the life of bagman and cart, of +tinker, and pig-dealer, and all cheery creatures that drink and chaffer +together in the sun. He belonged, above all, to the scanty class of +clear-seeing persons who know both what they are good for and what they really +want. To know what you would like to do is one thing; to go out boldly and do +it is another—and a rarer; and the sterile fields about Hell-Gate are strewn +with the corpses of those who would an if they could. +</p> + +<p> +To be sure, being bent on the relaxation most congenial to one’s soul, it is +possible to push one’s disregard for convention too far: as is seen in the case +of another, though of an earlier generation, in the same establishment. In his +office there was the customary “attendance-book,” wherein the clerks were +expected to sign each day. Here his name one morning ceases abruptly from +appearing; he signs, indeed, no more. Instead of signature you find, a little +later, writ in careful commercial hand, this entry: “Mr—- did not attend at his +office to-day, having been hanged at eight o’clock in the morning for +horse-stealing.” Through the faded ink of this record do you not seem to catch, +across the gulf of years, some waft of the jolly humanity which breathed in +this prince among clerks? A formal precisian, doubtless, during business hours; +but with just this honest love of horseflesh lurking deep down there in +him—unsuspected, sweetening the whole lump. Can you not behold him, freed from +his desk, turning to pursue his natural bent, as a city-bred dog still striveth +to bury his bone deep in the hearth-rug? For no filthy lucre, you may be sure, +but from sheer love of the pursuit itself! All the same, he erred; erred, if +not in taste, at least in judgment: for we cannot entirely acquit him of blame +for letting himself be caught. +</p> + +<p> +In these tame and tedious days of the policeman rampant, our melancholy selves +are debarred from many a sport, joyous and debonair, whereof our happier +fathers were free. Book-stealing, to be sure, remains to us; but every one is +not a collector; and, besides, ’tis a diversion you can follow with equal +success all the year round. Still, the instance may haply be pregnant with +suggestion to many who wearily ask each year, what new place or pursuit +exhausted earth still keeps for the holiday-maker. ’Tis a sad but sober fact, +that the most of men lead flat and virtuous lives, departing annually with +their family to some flat and virtuous place, there to disport themselves in a +manner that is decent, orderly, wholly uninteresting, vacant of every buxom +stimulus. To such as these a suggestion, in all friendliness: why not try +crime? We shall not attempt to specify the particular branch—for every one must +himself seek out and find the path his nature best fits him to follow; but the +general charm of the prospect must be evident to all. The freshness and novelty +of secrecy, the artistic satisfaction in doing the act of self-expression as +well as it can possibly be done; the experience of being not the hunter, but +the hunted, not the sportsman, but the game; the delight of comparing and +discussing crimes with your mates over a quiet pipe on your return to town; +these new pleasures—these and their like—would furnish just that gentle +stimulant, that peaceful sense of change so necessary to the tired worker. And +then the fact, that you would naturally have to select and plan out your +particular line of diversion without advice or assistance, has its own +advantage. For the moment a man takes to dinning in your ears that you ought, +you really ought, to go to Norway, you at once begin to hate Norway with a hate +that ever will be; and to have Newlyn, Cromer, or Dawlish, Carinthia or the +Austrian Tyrol jammed down your throat, is enough to initiate the discovery +that your own individual weakness is a joyous and persistent liking for +manslaughter. +</p> + +<p> +Some few seem to be born without much innate tendency to crime. After all, it +is mostly a matter of heredity; these unfortunates are less culpable than their +neglectful ancestors; and it is a fault that none need really blush for in the +present. For such as they there still remains the example of the +turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden possibilities. Denied the great +delight of driving a locomotive, or a fire-engine—whirled along in a glorious +nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar—what bliss to the +palefaced quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and +Chelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at sixpence a head! Though +turnpikes be things of the past, there are still tolls to be taken on many a +pleasant reach of Thames. What happiness in quiet moments to tend the +lock-keeper’s flower-beds—perhaps make love to his daughter; anon in busier +times to let the old gates swing, work the groaning winches, and hear the water +lap and suck and gurgle as it slowly sinks or rises with its swaying freight; +to dangle legs over the side and greet old acquaintances here and there among +the parti-coloured wayfarers passing up or down; while tobacco palleth not on +the longest day, and beer is ever within easy reach. The iron tetter that +scurfs the face of our island has killed out the pleasant life of the road; but +many of its best conditions still linger round these old toll gates, free from +dust and clatter, on the silent liquid Highway to the West. +</p> + +<p> +These for the weaker brethren: but for him who is conscious of the Gift, the +path is plain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>Deus Terminus</h2> + +<p> +The practical Roman, stern constructor of roads and codes, when he needs must +worship, loved a deity practical as himself; and in his parcelling of the known +world into plots, saying unto this man, Bide here, and to that, Sit you down +there, he could scarce fail to evolve the god Terminus: visible witness of +possession and dominion, type of solid facts not to be quibbled away. We Romans +of this latter day—so hailed by others, or complacently christened by +ourselves—are Roman in nothing more than in this; and, as much in the less +tangible realms of thought as in our solid acres, we are fain to set up the +statue which shall proclaim that so much country is explored, marked out, +allotted, and done with; that such and such ramblings and excursions are +practicable and permissible, and all else is exploded, illegal, or absurd. And +in this way we are left with naught but a vague lingering tradition of the +happier days before the advent of the ruthless deity. +</p> + +<p> +The sylvan glories of yonder stretch of woodland renew themselves each autumn, +regal as ever. It is only the old enchantment that is gone; banished by the +matter-of-fact deity, who has stolidly settled exactly where Lord A.’s shooting +ends and Squire B.’s begins. Once, no such petty limitations fettered the mind. +A step into the woodland was a step over the border—the margin of the material; +and then, good-bye to the modern world of the land-agent and the “Field” +advertisement! A chiming of little bells over your head, and lo! the peregrine, +with eyes like jewels, fluttered through the trees, her jesses catching in the +boughs. ’Twas the favourite of the Princess, the windows of whose father’s +castle already gleamed through the trees, where honours and favours awaited the +adventurous. The white doe sprang away through the thicket, her snowy flank +stained with blood; she made for the enchanted cot, and for entrance you too +had the pass-word. Did you fail on her traces, nor fox nor mole was too busy to +spare a moment for friendly advice or information. Little hands were stretched +to trip you, fairy gibe and mockery pelted you from every rabbit-hole; and O +what Dryads you have kissed among the leaves, in that brief blissful moment ere +they hardened into tree! ’Tis pity, indeed, that this sort of thing should have +been made to share the suspicion attaching to the poacher; that the stony stare +of the boundary god should confront you at the end of every green ride and +rabbit-run; while the very rabbits themselves are too disgusted with the +altered circumstances to tarry a moment for so much as to exchange the time of +day. +</p> + +<p> +Truly this age is born, like Falstaff, with a white head and something a round +belly: and will none of your jigs and fantasies. The golden era of princesses +is past. For your really virtuous ’prentices there still remain a merchant’s +daughter or two, and a bottle of port o’ Sundays on the Clapham mahogany. For +the rest of us, one or two decent clubs, and plenty of nice roomy lunatic +asylums. “Go spin, you jade, go spin!” is the one greeting for Imagination. And +yet—what a lip the slut has! What an ankle! Go to: there’s nobody looking; let +us lock the door, pull down the blinds, and write us a merry ballad. +</p> + +<p> +’Tis ungracious, perhaps, to regret what is gone for ever, when so much is +given in return. A humour we have, that is entirely new; and allotments that +shall win back Astræa. Our Labor Program stands for evidence that the Board +School, at least, has done enduring work; and the useless race of poets is fast +dying out. Though we no longer conjecture what song the Sirens sang, or what +name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, yet many a prize (of +guineas galore) awaits the competitor who will stoop, week by week, to more +practical research. “Le monde marche,” as Renan hath it, “vers une sorte +d’americanisme.... Peut-être la vulgarité générale sera-t-elle un jour la +condition du bonheur des élus. Nous n’avons pas le droit d’etre fort +difficiles.” We will be very facile, then, since needs must; remembering the +good old proverb that “scornful dogs eat dirty puddings.” But, ere we show +Terminus the door, at least let us fling one stone at the shrieking sulphureous +houses of damnation erected as temples in his honour, and dignified with his +name! There, ’mid clangour, dirt, and pestilence of crowding humanity, the very +spirit of worry and unrest sits embodied. The old Roman was not such a bad +fellow. His deity of demarcation at least breathed open air, and knew the +kindly touch of sun and wind. His simple rites were performed amid flowers and +under blue sky, by sunny roads or tranquil waters; and on this particular altar +the sacrifice was ordained to be free from any stain of gore. Our hour of +sacrifice, alas, has not yet come. When it does—(<i>et haud procul +absit!</i>)—let the offering be no bloodless one, but let (for choice) a fat +and succulent stationmaster smoke and crackle on the altar of expiation! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>Of Smoking</h2> + +<p> +Concerning Cigarette Smoking: It hath been well observed by a certain +philosopher that this is a practice commendable enough, and pleasant to indulge +in, “when you’re not smoking”; wherein the whole criticism of the cigarette is +found, in a little room. Of the same manner of thinking was one that I knew, +who kept by him an ample case bulging with cigarettes, to smoke while he was +filling his pipe. Toys they be verily, <i>nugæ,</i> and shadows of the +substance. Serviceable, nevertheless, as shadows sometimes be when the +substance is temporarily unattainable; as between the acts of a play, in the +park, or while dressing for dinner: that such moments may not be entirely +wasted. That cigarette, however, which is so prompt to appear after dinner I +would reprehend and ban and totally abolish: as enemy to that diviner thing +before which it should pale its ineffectual fires in shame—to wit, good drink, +<i>“la dive bouteille”;</i> except indeed when the liquor be bad, as is +sometimes known to happen. Then it may serve in some sort as a sorry +consolation. But to leave these airy substitutes, and come to smoking. +</p> + +<p> +It hath been ofttimes debated whether the morning pipe be the sweeter, or that +first pipe of the evening which “Hesperus, who bringeth all good things,” +brings to the weary with home and rest. The first is smoked on a clearer +palate, and comes to unjaded senses like the kiss of one’s first love; but +lacks that feeling of perfect fruition, of merit recompensed and the goal and +the garland won, which clings to the vesper bowl. Whence it comes that the +majority give the palm to the latter. To which I intend no slight when I find +the incense that arises at matins sweeter even than that of evensong. For, +although with most of us who are labourers in the vineyard, toilers and +swinkers, the morning pipe is smoked in hurry and fear and a sense of alarums +and excursions and fleeting trains, yet with all this there are certain halcyon +periods sure to arrive—Sundays, holidays, and the like—the whole joy and peace +of which are summed up in that one beatific pipe after breakfast, smoked in a +careless majesty like that of the gods “when they lie beside their nectar, and +the clouds are lightly curled.” Then only can we be said really to smoke. And +so this particular pipe of the day always carries with it festal reminiscences: +memories of holidays past, hopes for holidays to come; a suggestion of sunny +lawns and flannels and the ungirt loin; a sense withal of something free and +stately, as of “faint march-music in the air,” or the old Roman cry of +“Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement.” +</p> + +<p> +If there be any fly in the pipe-smoker’s ointment, it may be said to lurk in +the matter of “rings.” Only the exceptionally gifted smoker can recline in his +chair and emit at will the perfect smoke-ring, in consummate eddying +succession. He of the meaner sort must be content if, at rare heaven-sent +intervals—while thinking, perhaps, of nothing less—there escape from his lips +the unpremeditated flawless circle. Then <i>“deus fio”</i> he is moved to cry, +at that breathless moment when his creation hangs solid and complete, ere the +particles break away and blend with the baser atmosphere. Nay, some will deny +to any of us terrene smokers the gift of fullest achievement: for what saith +<i>the</i> poet of the century? “On the earth the broken arcs: in the heaven +the perfect round!” +</p> + +<p> +It was well observed by a certain character in one of Wilkie Collins’s novels +(if an imperfect memory serveth me rightly) that women will take pleasure in +scents derived from animal emanations, clarified fats, and the like; yet do +illogically abhor the “clean, dry, vegetable smell” of tobacco. Herein the true +base of the feminine objection is reached; being, as usual, inherent want of +logic rather than any distaste, in the absolute, for the thing in question. +Thinking that they ought to dislike, they do painfully cast about for reasons +to justify their dislike, when none really exist. As a specimen of their +so-called arguments, I remember how a certain fair one triumphantly pointed out +to me that my dog, though loving me well, could yet never be brought to like +the smell of tobacco. To whom I, who respected my dog (as Ben saith of Master +Shakespeare) on this side idolatry as much as anything, was yet fain to point +out—more in sorrow than in anger—that a dog, being an animal who delights to +pass his whole day, from early morn to dewy eve, in shoving his nose into every +carrion beastliness that he can come across, could hardly be considered +<i>arbiter elegantiarum</i> in the matter of smells. But indeed I did wrong to +take such foolish quibbling seriously; nor would I have done so, if she hadn’t +dragged my poor innocent dog into the discussion. +</p> + +<p> +Of Smoking in Bed: There be who consider this a depravity—an instance of that +excess in the practice of a virtue which passes into vice—and couple it with +dram-drinking: who yet fail to justify themselves by argument. For if bed be by +common consent the greatest bliss, the divinest spot, on earth, <i>“ille +terrarum qui præter omnes angulus ridet”;</i> and if tobacco be the true Herb +of Grace, and a joy and healing balm, and respite and nepenthe,—if all this be +admitted, why are two things, super-excellent separately, noxious in +conjunction? And is not the Bed Smoker rather an epicure in pleasure—self +indulgent perhaps, but still the triumphant creator of a new “blend,” reminding +one of a certain traveller’s account of an intoxicant patronised in the South +Sea Islands, which combines the blissful effect of getting drunk and remaining +sober to enjoy it? Yet I shall not insist too much on this point, but would +only ask—so long as the smoker be unwedded—for some tolerance in the matter and +a little logic in the discussion thereof. +</p> + +<p> +Concerning Cigars: That there be large sums given for these is within common +knowledge. 1<i>d.,</i> 2<i>d.,</i> nay even 4<i>d.,</i> is not too great a +price, if a man will have of the finest leaf, reckless of expense. In this sort +of smoking, however, I find more of vainglory and ostentation than solid +satisfaction; and its votaries would seem to display less a calm, healthy +affection for tobacco than (as Sir T. Browne hath it) a “passionate +prodigality.” And, besides grievous wasting of the pocket, atmospheric changes, +varyings in the crops, and the like, cause uncertainty to cling about each +individual weed, so that man is always more or less at the mercy of Nature and +the elements—an unsatisfactory and undignified position in these latter days of +the Triumphant Democracy. But worst and fatallest of all, to every cigar-smoker +it is certain to happen that once in his life, by some happy combination of +time, place, temperament, and Nature—by some starry influence, maybe, or freak +of the gods in mocking sport—once, and once only, he will taste the aroma of +the perfect leaf at just the perfect point—the ideal cigar. Henceforth his life +is saddened; as one kissed by a goddess in a dream, he goes thereafter, as one +might say, in a sort of love-sickness. Seeking he scarce knows what, his +existence becomes a dissatisfied yearning; the world is spoiled for him, its +joys are tasteless: so he wanders, vision-haunted, down dreary days to some +miserable end. +</p> + +<p> +Yet, if one will walk this path and take the risks, the thing may be done at +comparatively small expense. To such I would commend the Roman motto, slightly +altered—<i>Alieni appetens, sui avarus.</i> There be always good fellows, with +good cigars for their friends. Nay, too, the boxes of these lie open; an the +good cigar belongs rather to him that can appreciate it aright than to the +capitalist who, owing to a false social system, happens to be its temporary +guardian and trustee. Again there is a saying—bred first, I think, among the +schoolmen at Oxford—that it is the duty of a son to live up to his father’s +income. Should any young man have found this task too hard for him, after the +most strenuous and single-minded efforts, at least he can resolutely smoke his +father’s cigars. In the path of duty complete success is not always to be +looked for; but an approving conscience, the sure reward of honest endeavour, +is within reach of all. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>An Autumn Encounter</h2> + +<p> +For yet another mile or two the hot dusty road runs through level fields, till +it reaches yonder shoulder of the downs, already golden three-parts up with +ripening corn. Thitherwards lies my inevitable way; and now that home is almost +in sight it seems hard that the last part of the long day’s sweltering and +delightful tramp must needs be haunted by that hateful speck, black on the +effulgence of the slope. Did I not know he was only a scarecrow, the thing +might be in a way companionable: a pleasant suggestive surmise, piquing +curiosity, gilding this last weary stage with some magic of expectancy. But I +passed close by him on my way out. Early as I was, he was already up and doing, +eager to introduce himself. He leered after me as I swung down the +road,—mimicked my gait, as it seemed, in a most uncalled-for way; and when I +looked back, he was blowing derisive kisses of farewell with his empty sleeve. +</p> + +<p> +I had succeeded, however, in shaking off the recollection between the morning’s +start and now; so it was annoying that he should force himself on me, just when +there was no getting rid of him. At this distance, however, he might be +anything. An indeterminate blot, it seems to waver, to falter, to come and +vanish again in the quivering, heated air. Even so, in the old time, leaning on +that familiar gate—are the tell-tale inwoven initials still decipherable?—I +used to watch Her pacing demurely towards me through the corn. It was +ridiculous, it was fatuous, under all the circumstances it was monstrous, and +yet{...}! We were both under twenty, so She was She, and I was I, and there +were only we three the wide world over, she and I and the unbetraying gate. +<i>Porta eburnea!</i> False visions alone sped through you, though Cupid was +wont to light on your topmost bar, and preen his glowing plumes. And to think +that I should see her once more, coming down the path as if not a day had +passed, hesitating as of old, and then—but surely her ankles seem—Confound that +scarecrow!... +</p> + +<p> +His sex is by this time painfully evident; also his condition in life, which is +as of one looking back on better days. And now he is upon a new tack. Though +here on the level it is still sultry and airless, an evening breeze is playing +briskly along the slope where he stands, and one sleeve saws the air violently; +the other is pointed stiffly heavenwards. It is all plain enough, my poor +friend! The sins of the world are a heavy burden and a grievous unto you. You +have a mission, you must testify; it will forth, in season and out of season. +For man, he wakes and sleeps and sins betimes: but crows sin steadily, without +any cessation. And this unhappy state of things is your own particular +business. Even at this distance I seem to hear you rasping it: “Salvation, +damnation, damnation, salvation!” And the jolly earth smiles in the perfect +evenglow, and the corn ripples and laughs all round you, and one young rook +(only fledged this year, too!), after an excellent simulation of prostrate, +heart-broken penitence, soars joyously away, to make love to his neighbour’s +wife. “Salvation, damnation, damn—” A shifty wriggle of the road, and he is +transformed once more. Flung back in an ecstasy of laughter, holding his lean +sides, his whole form writhes with the chuckle and gurgle of merriment. Ho, ho! +what a joke it was! How I took you all in! Even the rooks! What a joke is +everything, to be sure! +</p> + +<p> +Truly, I shall be glad to get quit of this heartless mummer. Fortunately I +shall soon be past him. And now, behold! the old dog waxes amorous. Mincing, +mowing, empty sleeve on hollow breast, he would fain pose as the most +irresistible old hypocrite that ever paced a metropolitan kerb. “Love, you +young dogs,” he seems to croak, “Love is the one thing worth living for! Enjoy +your present, rooks and all, as I do!” Why, indeed, should he alone be +insensible to the golden influence of the hour? More than one supple waist +(alas! for universal masculine frailty!) has been circled by that tattered +sleeve in days gone by; a throbbing heart once beat where sodden straw now +fails to give a manly curve to the chest. Why should the coat survive, and not +a particle of the passion that inspired it long ago? +</p> + +<p> +At last I confront him, face to face: and the villain grins recognition, +completely unabashed. Nay, he cocks his eye with a significant glance under the +slouch of his shapeless hat, and his arm points persistently and with +intelligence up the road. My good fellow, I know the way to the Dog and Duck as +well as you do: I was going there anyhow, without your officious +interference—and the beer, as you justly remark, is unimpeachable. But was this +really all you’ve been trying to say to me, this last half-hour? Well, well! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>The White Poppy</h2> + +<p> +A riot of scarlet on gold, the red poppy of our native fields tosses heavy +tresses with gipsy <i>abandon;</i> her sister of the sea-shore is golden, a +yellow blossom that loves the keen salt savour of the spray. Of another hue is +the poppy of history, of romance, of the muse. White as the stark death-shroud, +pallid as the cheeks of that queen of a silent land whose temples she +languorously crowns, ghost-like beside her fuller-blooded kin, she droops +dream-laden, <i>Papaver somniferum,</i> the poppy of the magic juice of +oblivion. In the royal plenitude of summer, the scarlet blooms will sometimes +seem but a red cry from earth in memory of the many dews of battle that have +drenched these acres in years gone by, for little end but that these same +“bubbles of blood” might glow to-day; the yellow flower does but hint of the +gold that has dashed a thousand wrecks at her feet around these shores: for +happier suggestion we must turn to her of the pallid petals, our white Lady of +Consolation. Fitting hue to typify the crowning blessing of forgetfulness! Too +often the sable robes of night dissemble sleeplessness, remorse, regret, +self-questioning. Let black, then, rather stand for hideous memory: white for +blessed blank oblivion, happiest gift of the gods! For who, indeed, can say +that the record of his life is not crowded with failure and mistake, stained +with its petty cruelties of youth, its meannesses and follies of later years, +all which storm and clamour incessantly at the gates of memory, refusing to be +shut out? Leave us alone, O gods, to remember our felicities, our successes: +only aid us, ye who recall no gifts, aptly and discreetly to forget. +</p> + +<p> +Discreetly, we say; for it is a tactful forgetfulness that makes for happiness. +In the minor matter, for instance, of small money obligations, that shortness +of memory which the school of Professors Panurge and Falstaff rashly praises, +may often betray into some unfortunate allusion or reference to the subject +which shall pain the delicate feelings of the obliger; or, if he be of coarser +clay, shall lead him in his anger to express himself with unseemliness, and +thereby to do violence to his mental tranquillity, in which alone, as Marcus +Aurelius teacheth, lieth the perfection of moral character. This is to be a +stumbling-block and an offence against the brethren. It is better to keep just +memory enough to avoid such hidden rocks and shoals; in which thing Mr +Swiveller is our great exemplar, whose mental map of London was a chart wherein +every creditor was carefully “buoyed.” +</p> + +<p> +The wise man prays, we are told, for a good digestion: let us add to the +prayer—and a bad memory. Truly we are sometimes tempted to think that we are +the only ones cursed with this corroding canker. Our friends, we can swear, +have all, without exception, atrocious memories; why is ours alone so hideously +vital? Yet this isolation must be imaginary; for even as we engage in this +selfish moan for help in our own petty case, we are moved to add a word for +certain others who, meaning no ill, unthinkingly go about to add to humanity’s +already heavy load of suffering. How much needless misery is caused in this +world by the reckless “recollections” of dramatic and other celebrities? You +gods, in lending ear to our prayer, remember too, above all other sorts and +conditions of men, these our poor erring brothers and sisters, the sometime +<i>sommités</i> of Mummerdom! +</p> + +<p> +Moments there are, it is true, when this traitor spirit tricks you: when some +subtle scent, some broken notes of an old song, nay, even some touch of a +fresher air on your cheeks at night—a breath of <i>“le vent qui vient à travers +la montagne”</i>—have power to ravish, to catch you back to the blissful days +when you trod the one authentic Paradise. Moments only, alas! Then the evil +crowd rushes in again, howls in the sacred grove, tramples down and defiles the +happy garden; and once more you cry to Our Lady of Sleep, crowned of the white +poppy. And you envy your dog who, for full discharge of a present benefaction +having wagged you a hearty, expressive tail, will then pursue it gently round +the hearth-rug till, in restful coil, he reaches it at last, and oblivion with +it; every one of his half-dozen diurnal sleeps being in truth a royal amnesty. +</p> + +<p> +But whose the hand that shall reach us the herb of healing? Perdita blesses +every guest at the shearing with a handful of blossom; but this gift is not to +be asked of her whose best wish to her friends is “grace and remembrance.” The +fair Ophelia, rather: nay, for as a nursling she hugs her grief, and for her +the memory of the past is a “sorrow’s crown of sorrow.” What flowers are these +her pale hand offers? “There’s pansies, that’s for thoughts!” For me rather, O +dear Ophelia, the white poppy of forgetfulness. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap13"></a>A Bohemian in Exile</h2> + +<h3>A Reminiscence</h3> + +<p> +When, many years ago now, the once potent and extensive kingdom of Bohemia +gradually dissolved and passed away, not a few historians were found to +chronicle its past glories; and some have gone on to tell the fate of this or +that once powerful chieftain who either donned the swallow-tail and conformed +or, proudly self-exiled, sought some quiet retreat and died as he had lived, a +Bohemian. But these were of the princes of the land. To the people, the +villeins, the common rank and file, does no interest attach? Did they waste and +pine, anæmic, in thin, strange, unwonted air? Or sit at the table of the +scornful and learn, with Dante, how salt was alien bread? It is of one of those +faithful commons I would speak, narrating only “the short and simple annals of +the poor.” +</p> + +<p> +It is to be noted that the kingdom aforesaid was not so much a kingdom as a +United States—a collection of self-ruling guilds, municipalities, or republics, +bound together by a common method of viewing life. “There <i>once</i> was a +king of Bohemia”—but that was a long time ago, and even Corporal Trim was not +certain in whose reign it was. These small free States, then, broke up +gradually, from various causes and with varying speed; and I think ours was one +of the last to go. +</p> + +<p> +With us, as with many others, it was a case of lost leaders. “Just for a +handful of silver he left us”; though it was not exactly that, but rather that, +having got the handful of silver, they wanted a wider horizon to fling it about +under than Bloomsbury afforded. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +So they left us for their pleasure; and in due time, one by one— +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +But I will not be morose about them; they had honestly earned their success, +and we all honestly rejoiced at it, and do so still. +</p> + +<p> +When old Pan was dead and Apollo’s bow broken, there were many faithful pagans +who would worship at no new shrines, but went out to the hills and caves, truer +to the old gods in their discrowned desolation than in their pomp and power. +Even so were we left behind, a remnant of the faithful. We had never expected +to become great in art or song; it was the life itself that we loved; that was +our end—not, as with them, the means to an end. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +We aimed at no glory, no lovers of glory we;<br/> +Give us the glory of going on and still to be.<br/> +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Unfortunately, going on was no longer possible; the old order had changed, and +we could only patch up our broken lives as best might be. +</p> + +<p> +Fothergill said that he, for one, would have no more of it. The past was dead, +and he wasn’t going to try to revive it. Henceforth he, too, would be dead to +Bloomsbury. Our forefathers, speaking of a man’s death, said “he changed his +life.” This is how Fothergill changed his life and died to Bloomsbury. One +morning he made his way to the Whitechapel Road, and there he bought a barrow. +The Whitechapel barrows are of all sizes, from the barrow wheeled about by a +boy with half a dozen heads of cabbages to barrows drawn by a tall pony, such +as on Sundays take the members of a club to Epping Forest. They are all +precisely the same in plan and construction, only in the larger sizes the +handles develop or evolve into shafts; and they are equally suitable, according +to size, for the vending of whelks, for a hot-potato can, a piano organ, or for +the conveyance of a cheery and numerous party to the Derby. Fothergill bought a +medium sized “developed” one, and also a donkey to fit; he had it painted +white, picked out with green—the barrow, not the donkey—and when his +arrangements were complete, stabled the whole for the night in Bloomsbury. The +following morning, before the early red had quite faded from the sky, the +exodus took place, those of us who were left being assembled to drink a parting +whisky-and-milk in sad and solemn silence. Fothergill turned down Oxford +Street, sitting on the shaft with a short clay in his mouth, and disappeared +from our sight, heading west at a leisurely pace. So he passed out of our lives +by way of the Bayswater Road. +</p> + +<p> +They must have wandered far and seen many things, he and his donkey, from the +fitful fragments of news that now and again reached us. It seems that +eventually, his style of living being economical, he was enabled to put down +his donkey and barrow, and set up a cart and a mare—no fashionable gipsy-cart, +a sort of houseboat on wheels, but a light and serviceable cart, with a +moveable tilt, constructed on his own designs. This allowed him to take along +with him a few canvases and other artists’ materials; soda-water, whisky, and +such like necessaries; and even to ask a friend from town for a day or two, if +he wanted to. +</p> + +<p> +He was in this state of comparative luxury when at last, by the merest +accident, I foregathered with him once more. I had pulled up to Streatley one +afternoon, and, leaving my boat, had gone for a long ramble on the glorious +North Berkshire Downs to stretch my legs before dinner. Somewhere over on +Cuckhamsley Hill, by the side of the Ridgeway, remote from the habitable world, +I found him, smoking his vesper pipe on the shaft of his cart, the mare +cropping the short grass beside him. He greeted me without surprise or +effusion, as if we had only parted yesterday, and without a hint of an allusion +to past times, but drifted quietly into rambling talk of his last three years, +and, without ever telling his story right out, left a strange picturesque +impression of a nomadic life which struck one as separated by fifty years from +modern conventional existence. The old road-life still lingered on in places, +it seemed, once one got well away from the railway: there were two Englands +existing together, the one fringing the great iron highways wherever they might +go—the England under the eyes of most of us. The other, unguessed at by many, +in whatever places were still vacant of shriek and rattle, drowsed on as of +old: the England of heath and common and windy sheep down, of by-lanes and +village-greens—the England of Parson Adams and Lavengro. The spell of the free +untrammelled life came over me as I listened, till I was fain to accept of his +hospitality and a horse-blanket for the night, oblivious of civilised comforts +down at the Bull. On the downs where Alfred fought we lay and smoked, gazing up +at the quiet stars that had shone on many a Dane lying stark and still a +thousand years ago; and in the silence of the lone tract that enfolded us we +seemed nearer to those old times than to these I had left that afternoon, in +the now hushed and sleeping valley of the Thames. +</p> + +<p> +When the news reached me, some time later, that Fothergill’s aunt had died and +left him her house near town and the little all she had possessed, I heard it +with misgivings, not to say forebodings. For the house had been his +grandfather’s, and he had spent much of his boyhood there; it had been a dream +of his early days to possess it in some happy future, and I knew he could never +bear to sell or let it. On the other hand, can you stall the wild ass of the +desert? And will not the caged eagle mope and pine? +</p> + +<p> +However, possession was entered into, and all seemed to go well for the time. +The cart was honourably installed in the coach-house, the mare turned out to +grass. Fothergill lived idly and happily, to all seeming, with “a book of +verses underneath the bough,” and a bottle of old claret for the friend who +might chance to drop in. But as the year wore on small signs began to appear +that he who had always “rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak” was +beginning to feel himself caged, though his bars were gilded. +</p> + +<p> +I was talking one day to his coachman (he now kept three men-servants), and he +told me that of a Sunday morning when the household had gone to church and +everything was quiet, Mr Fothergill would go into the coach-house and light his +pipe, and sit on the step of the brougham (he had a brougham now), and gaze at +the old cart, and smoke and say nothing; and smoke and say nothing again. He +didn’t like it, the coachman confessed; and to me it seemed ominous. +</p> + +<p> +One morning late in March, at the end of a long hard winter, I was wakened by a +flood of sunshine. The early air came warm and soft through the open window; +the first magic suggestion of spring was abroad, with its whispered hints of +daffodils and budding hawthorns; and one’s blood danced to imagined pipings of +Pan from happy fields far distant. At once I thought of Fothergill, and, with a +certain foreboding of ill, made my way down to Holly Lodge as soon as possible. +It was with no surprise at all that I heard that the master was missing. In the +very first of the morning, it seemed, or ever the earliest under-housemaid had +begun to set man-traps on the stairs and along the passages, he must have +quietly left the house. The servants were cheerful enough, nevertheless, and +thought the master must only have “gone for a nice long walk,” and so on, after +the manner of their kind. Without a word I turned my steps to the coach-house. +Sure enough, the old cart was missing; the mare was gone from the paddock. It +was no good my saying anything; pursuit of this wild haunter of tracks and +by-paths would have been futile indeed. So I kept my own counsel. Fothergill +never returned to Holly Lodge, and has been more secret and evasive since his +last flight, rarely venturing on old camping grounds near home, like to a bird +scared by the fowler’s gun. +</p> + +<p> +Once indeed, since then, while engaged in pursuit of the shy quarry known as +the Early Perp., late Dec., E. Eng., and the like, specimens of which I was +tracking down in the west, I hit upon him by accident; hearing in an old +village rumours concerning a strange man in a cart who neither carried samples +nor pushed the brewing interest by other means than average personal +consumption—tales already beginning to be distorted into material for the myth +of the future. I found him friendly as ever, equally ready to spin his yarns. +As the evening wore on, I ventured upon an allusion to past times and Holly +Lodge; but his air of puzzled politeness convinced me that the whole thing had +passed out of his mind, as a slight but disagreeable incident in the even tenor +of his nomadic existence. +</p> + +<p> +After all, his gains may have outbalanced his losses. Had he cared, he might, +with his conversational gifts, have been a social success; certainly, I think, +an artistic one. He had great powers, had any impulse been present to urge him +to execution and achievement. But he was for none of these things. +Contemplative, receptive, with a keen sense of certain sub-tones and side +aspects of life unseen by most, he doubtless chose wisely to enjoy life his own +way, and to gather from the fleeting days what bliss they had to give, nor +spend them in toiling for a harvest to be reaped when he was dust. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Some for the glories of this life, and some<br/> +Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come:<br/> +Ah, take the cash and let the credit go,<br/> +Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum.<br/> +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap14"></a>Justifiable Homicide</h2> + +<p> +This is a remedial age, an age of keys for all manner of locks; so he cannot be +said to ask too much who seeks for exact information as to how a young man +ought, in justice to himself and to society, to deal with his relations. During +his minority he has lain entirely at their mercy: has been their butt, their +martyr, their drudge, their <i>corpus vile.</i> Possessing all the sinews of +war, this stiff-necked tribe has consistently refused to “part”: even for the +provision of those luxuries so much more necessary than necessities. Its +members have crammed their victim full of precepts, rules of conduct, moral +maxims, and most miscellaneous counsel: all which he intuitively suspected at +the time, and has ascertained by subsequent experience, to be utterly +worthless. Now, when their hour has come, when the tocsin has sounded at last, +and the Gaul is at the gate, they still appear to think that the old condition +of things is to go on; unconscious, apparently, of atonement due, of +retribution to be exacted, of wrongs to be avenged and of insults to be wiped +away! +</p> + +<p> +Over the north-west frontier, where the writ of the English Raj runs not, the +artless Afghan is happy in a code that fully provides for relatives who neglect +or misunderstand their obligations. An Afghan it was who found himself +compelled to reprove an uncle with an unfortunate habit of squandering the +family estate. An excellent relative, this uncle, in all other respects. As a +liar, he had few equals; he robbed with taste and discretion; and his murders +were all imbued with true artistic feeling. He might have lived to a green old +age of spotless respectability but for his one little failing. As it was, +justice had to be done, <i>ruat cælum:</i> and so it came about that one day +the nephew issued forth to correct him with a matchlock. The innocent old man +was cultivating his paternal acres; so the nephew was able, unperceived, to get +a steady sight on him. His finger was on the trigger, when suddenly there +slipped into his mind the divine precept: “Allah is merciful!” He lowered his +piece, and remained for a little plunged in thought; meanwhile the unconscious +uncle hoed his paddy. Then with a happy smile he took aim once more, for there +also occurred to him the precept equally divine: “But Allah is also just.” With +an easy conscience he let fly, and behold! there was an uncle the more in +Paradise. +</p> + +<p> +It was probably some little affair of a similar quality that constrained a +recruit in a regiment stationed at Peshawur to apply for leave of absence: in +order to attend to family matters of importance. The Colonel knew it was small +use refusing the leave, as in that case his recruit would promptly desert; so +he could only ask, how long was the transaction like to take? It was told him, +after consideration, that, allowing for all possible difficulties and delays, a +month would meet the necessities of the case; and on that understanding he +allowed his man to depart. At the end of the month he reappeared on duty, a +subdued but mellow cheer shining through his wonted impassiveness. His Colonel +ventured to inquire of him, in a general way, if the business in question were +satisfactorily concluded. And he replied: “I got him from behind a rock.” +</p> + +<p> +There are practical difficulties in the way of the adoption of such methods at +home. We must be content to envy, without imitating, these free and happy sons +of the hills. And yet a few of the old school are left us still: averse from +change, mistrustful of progress, sticking steadily to the good old-fashioned +dagger and bowl. I had a friend who disposed of a relative every spring. Uncles +were his special line—(he had suffered much from their tribe, having been early +left an orphan)—though he had dabbled in aunts, and in his hot youth, when he +was getting his hand in, he had even dallied with a grand-parent or two. But it +was in uncles he excelled. He possessed (at the beginning of his career) a +large number of these connections, and pursuit of them, from the mere sordid +point of view of <i>£ s. d.,</i> proved lucrative. But he always protested +(and I believed him) that gain with him was a secondary consideration. It would +hardly be in the public interest to disclose his <i>modus operandi.</i> I shall +only remark that he was one of the first to realise the security and immunity +afforded the artist by the conditions of modern London. Hence it happened that +he usually practised in town, but spent his vacations at the country houses of +such relations as were still spared him, where he was always the life and soul +of the place. Unfortunately he is no longer with us, to assist in the revision +of this article: nor was it permitted me to soothe his last moments. The +presiding Sheriff was one of those new-fangled officials who insist on the +exclusion of the public, and he declined to admit me either in the capacity of +a personal connection or, though I tried my hardest, as the representative of +“The National Observer.” It only remains to be said of my much-tried and still +lamented friend, that he left few relatives to mourn his untimely end. +</p> + +<p> +But our reluctant feet must needs keep step with the imperious march of Time, +and my poor friend’s Art (as himself in later years would sorrowfully admit) is +now almost as extinct as the glass-staining of old, or “Robbia’s craft so apt +and strange”; while our thin-blooded youth, too nice for the joyous old +methods, are content to find sweetest revenge in severely dropping their +relations. This is indeed a most effective position: it exasperates, while it +is unassailable. And yet there remains a higher course, a nobler task. Not mere +forgiveness: it is simple duty to forgive—even one’s guardians. No young man of +earnest aspirations will be content to stop there. Nay: lead them on, these +lost ones, by the hand; conduct them “generously and gently, and with linking +of the arm”; educate them, eradicate their false ideals, dispel their foolish +prejudices; be to their faults a little blind and to their virtues very kind: +in fine, realise that you have a mission—that these wretches are not here for +nothing. The task will seem hard at first; but only those who have tried can +know how much may be done by assiduous and kindly effort towards the +chastening—ay! the final redemption even!—of the most hopeless and pig-headed +of uncles. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap15"></a>The Fairy Wicket</h2> + +<p> +From digging in the sandy, over-triturated soil of times historical, all dotted +with date and number and sign, how exquisite the relief in turning to the dear +days outside history—yet not so very far off neither for us nurslings of the +northern sun—when kindly beasts would loiter to give counsel by the wayside, +and a fortunate encounter with one of the Good People was a surer path to +Fortune and the Bride than the best-worn stool that ever proved step-ladder to +aspiring youth. For then the Fairy Wicket stood everywhere ajar—everywhere and +to each and all. “Open, open, green hill!”—you needed no more recondite sesame +than that: and, whoever you were, you might have a glimpse of the elfin dancers +in the hall that is litten within by neither sun nor moon; or catch at the +white horse’s bridle as the Fairy Prince rode through. It has been closed now +this many a year (the fairies, always strong in the field, are excellent +wicket-keepers); and if it open at all, ’tis but for a moment’s mockery of the +material generation that so deliberately turned its back on the gap into +Elf-Land—that first stage to the Beyond. +</p> + +<p> +It was a wanton trick, though, that these folk of malice used to play on a +small school-boy, new kicked out of his nest into the draughty, uncomfortable +outer world, his unfledged skin still craving the feathers whereinto he was +wont to nestle. The barrack-like school, the arid, cheerless class-rooms, drove +him to Nature for redress; and, under an alien sky, he would go forth and +wander along the iron road by impassive fields, so like yet so unlike those +hitherto a part of him and responding to his every mood. And to him, thus +loitering with overladen heart, there would come suddenly a touch of warmth, of +strange surprise. The turn of the road just ahead—that, sure, is not all +unfamiliar? That row of elms—it cannot entirely be accident that they range +just <i>so?</i> And, if not accident, then round the bend will come the old +duck-pond, the shoulder of the barn will top it, a few yards on will be the +gate—it swings-to with its familiar click—the dogs race down the avenue—and +then—and then! It is all wildly fanciful; and yet, though knowing not +Tertullian, a <i>“credo quia impossibile”</i> is on his tongue as he quickens +his pace—for what else can he do? A step, and the spell is shattered—all is +cruel and alien once more; while every copse and hedge-row seems a-tinkle with +faint elfish laughter. The Fairies have had their joke: they have opened the +wicket one of their own hand’s-breadths, and shut it in their victim’s face. +When next that victim catches a fairy, he purposes to tie up the brat in sight +of his own green hill, and set him to draw up a practical scheme for Village +Councils. +</p> + +<p> +One of the many women I ever really loved, fair in the fearless old fashion, +was used to sing, in the blithe, unfettered accent of the people: “I’d like to +be a fairy, And dance upon my toes, I’d like to be a fairy, And wear short +close!” And in later life it is to her sex that the wee (but very wise) folk +sometimes delegate their power of torment. Such understudies are found to play +the part exceeding well; and many a time the infatuated youth believes he sees +in the depth of one sole pair of eyes—blue, brown, or green (the fairy +colour)—the authentic fairy wicket standing ajar: many a time must he hear the +quaint old formula, “I’m sure, if I’ve ever done anything to lead you to +think,” etc (runs it not so?), ere he shall realise that here is the gate upon +no magic pleasance but on a cheap suburban villa, banging behind the wrathful +rate-collector or hurled open to speed the pallid householder to the +Registrar’s Office. In still grosser habitations, too, they lurk, do the People +of Mischief, ready to frolic out on the unsuspecting one: as in the case, which +still haunts my memory, of a certain bottle of an historic Château-Yquem, hued +like Venetian glass, odorous as a garden in June. Forth from out the faint +perfume of this haunted drink there danced a bevy from Old France, clad in the +fashion of Louis-Quinze, peach-coloured knots of ribbon bedizening apple-green +velvets, as they moved in stately wise among the roses of the old garden, to +the quaint music—Rameau, was it?—of a fairy <i>cornemuse,</i> while fairy +Watteaus, Fragonards, Lancrets, sat and painted them. Alas! too shallow the +bottle, too brief the brawls: not to be recalled by any quantity of Green +Chartreuse. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap16"></a>Aboard the Galley</h2> + +<p> +He was cruising in the Southern Seas (was the Ulysses who told me this tale), +when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whose like he had not +before seen. For each little craft was a corpse, stiffly “marlined,” or bound +about with tarred rope, as mariners do use to treat plug tobacco: also +ballasted, and with a fair mast and sail stepped through his midriff. These +self-sufficing ships knew no divided authority: no pilot ever took the helm +from the captain’s hands; no mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained +of the provisions. In a certain island to windward (the native pilot explained) +it was the practice, when a man died, to bury him for the time being in dry, +desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from his people, when the waiting +bodies were brought out and, caulked and rigged <i>secumdum artem,</i> were +launched with the first fair breeze, the admiral at their head, on their voyage +to the Blessed Islands. And if a chief should die, and the sand should hold no +store of corpses for his escort, this simple practical folk would solve the +little difficulty by knocking some dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head, +that the notable might voyage like a gentleman. Whence this gallant little +company, running before the breeze, stark, happy, and extinct, all bound for +the Isles of Light! ’Twas a sight to shame us sitters at home, who believe in +those Islands, most of us, even as they, yet are content to trundle City-wards +or to Margate, so long as the sorry breath is in us; and, breathless at last, +to Bow or Kensal Green; without one effort, dead or alive, to reach the +far-shining Hesperides. +</p> + +<p> +“Dans la galère, capitane, nous étions quatre-vingt rameurs!” sang the oarsmen +in the ballad; and they, though indeed they toiled on the galley-bench, were +free and happy pirates, members of an honoured and liberal profession. But all +we—pirates, parsons, stockbrokers, whatever our calling—are but galley-slaves +of the basest sort, fettered to the oar each for his little spell. A common +misery links us all, like the chain that runs the length of the thwarts. Can +<i>nothing</i> make it worth our while not to quarrel with our fellows? The +menace of the storms is for each one and for all: the master’s whip has a fine +impartiality. Crack! the lash that scored my comrade’s back has flicked my +withers too; yet neither of us was shirking—it was that grinning ruffian in +front. Well: to-morrow, God willing, the evasion shall be ours, while he +writhes howling. But why do we never once combine—seize on the ship, fling our +masters into the sea, and steer for some pleasant isle far down under the Line, +beyond the still-vexed Bermoothes? When ho for feasting! Hey for tobacco and +free-quarters! But no: the days pass, and are reckoned up, and done with; and +ever more pressing cares engage. Those fellows on the leeward benches are +having an easier time than we poor dogs on the weather side? Then, let us +abuse, pelt, vilify then: let us steal their grub, and have at them generally +for a set of shirking, malingering brutes! What matter that to-morrow they may +be to windward, we to lee? We never can look ahead. And they know this well, +the gods our masters, pliers of the whip. And mayhap we like them none the +worse for it. +</p> + +<p> +Indeed, there is a traitor sort among ourselves, that spins facile phrases in +the honour of these whipmasters of ours—as <i>“omnes eodem cogimur,”</i> and +the rest; which is all very pretty and mighty consoling. The fact is, the poets +are the only people who score by the present arrangement; which it is therefore +their interest to maintain. While we are doing all the work, these incorrigible +skulkers lounge about and make ribald remarks; they write Greek tragedies on +Fate, on the sublimity of Suffering, on the Petty Span, and so on; and act in a +generally offensive way. And we are even weak enough to buy their books; offer +them drinks, peerages, and things; and say what superlative fellows they are! +But when the long-looked-for combination comes, and we poor devils have risen +and abolished fate, destiny, the Olympian Council, early baldness, and the +like, these poets will really have to go. +</p> + +<p> +And when every rhymester has walked the plank, shall we still put up with our +relations? True members of the “stupid party,” who never believe in us, who +know (and never forget) the follies of our adolescence; who are always wanting +us <i>not</i> to do things; who are lavish of advice, yet angered by the +faintest suggestion of a small advance in cash: shall the idle singers perish +and these endure? No: as soon as the last poet has splashed over the side, to +the sharks with our relations! +</p> + +<p> +The old barkey is lightening famously: who shall be next to go? The Sportsman +of intolerable yarns: who slays twice over—first, his game, and then the +miserable being he button-holes for the tedious recital. Shall we suffer +<i>him</i> longer? Who else? Who is that cowering under the bulwarks yonder? +The man who thinks he can imitate the Scottish accent! Splash! And the next +one? What a crowd is here! How they block the hatchways, lumber the deck, and +get between you and the purser’s room—these fadmongers, teetotallers, +missionaries of divers isms! Overboard with them, and hey for the Fortunate +Isles! Then for tobacco in a hammock ’twixt the palms! Then for wine cooled in +a brooklet losing itself in silver sands! Then for—but O these bilboes on our +ankles, how mercilessly they grip! The vertical sun blisters the bare back: +faint echoes of Olympian laughter seem to flicker like Northern Lights across +the stark and pitiless sky. One earnest effort would do it, my brothers! A +little modesty, a short sinking of private differences; and then we should all +be free and equal gentlemen of fortune, and I would be your Captain! “Who? you? +you would make a pretty Captain!” Better than you, you scurvy, skulking, little +galley-slave! “Galley-slave yourself, and be—- Pull together, boys, and lie +low! Here’s the Master coming with his whip!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap17"></a>The Lost Centaur</h2> + +<p> +It is somewhere set down (or does the legend only exist in the great volume of +ought-to-be-writ?) that the young Achilles, nurtured from babyhood by the wise +and kindly Cheiron, accustomed to reverence an ideal of human skill and wisdom +blent with all that was best and noblest of animal instinct, strength and +swiftness, found poor humanity sadly to miss, when at last the was sent forth +among his pottering little two-legged peers. Himself alone he had hitherto +fancied to be the maimed one, the incomplete; he looked to find the lords of +earth even such as these Centaurs; wise and magnanimous atop: below, shod with +the lightning, winged with the wind, terrible in the potentiality of the armed +heel. Instead of which—! How fallen was his first fair hope of the world! And +even when reconciled at last to the dynasty of the forked radish, after he had +seen its quality tested round the clangorous walls of Troy—some touch of an +imperial disdain ever lingered in his mind for these feeble folk who could +contentedly hail him—him, who had known Cheiron!—as hero and lord! +</p> + +<p> +Achilles has passed, with the Centaurs and Troy; but the feeling lingers. +</p> + +<p> +Of strange and divers strands is twisted the mysterious cord that, reaching +back “through spaces out of space and timeless time,” somewhere joins us to the +Brute; a twine of mingled yarn, not utterly base. As we grow from our animal +infancy, and the threads snap one by one at each gallant wing-stroke of a soul +poising for flight into Empyrean, we are yet conscious of a loss for every +gain, we have some forlorn sense of a vanished heritage. Willing enough are we +to “let the ape and tiger die”; but the pleasant cousins dissembled in hide and +fur and feather are not all tigers and apes: which last vile folk, indeed, +exist for us only in picture-books, and chiefly offend by always carrying the +Sunday School ensign of a Moral at their tails. Others—happily of less didactic +dispositions—there be; and it is to these unaffected, careless companions that +the sensible child is wont to devote himself; leaving severely alone the stiff, +tame creatures claiming to be of closer kin. And yet these playmates, while +cheerfully admitting him of their fellowship, make him feel his inferiority at +every point. Vainly, his snub nose projected earthwards, he essays to sniff it +with the terrier who (as becomes the nobler animal) is leading in the chase; +and he is ready to weep as he realises his loss. And the rest of the Free +Company,—the pony, the cows, the great cart-horses,—are ever shaming him by +their unboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the +friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his bread and drink of +his cup, and be unto him as a brother,—which among all these unhappy +bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purely contented, so apt to be the +guide, philosopher, and friend of boyhood as he? What wonder that at times, +when the neophyte in life begins to realise that all these desirable +accomplishments have had to be surrendered one by one in the process of +developing a Mind, the course of fitting out a Lord of Creation, he is wont—not +knowing the extent of the kingdom to which he is heir—to feel a little +discontented? +</p> + +<p> +Ere now this ill-humour, taking root in a nature wherein the animal is already +ascendant, has led by downward paths to the Goat-Foot, in whom the submerged +human system peeps out but fitfully, at exalted moments. He, the peevish and +irascible, shy of trodden ways and pretty domesticities, is linked to us by +little but his love of melody; but for which saving grace, the hair would soon +creep up from thigh to horn of him. At times he will still do us a friendly +turn: will lend a helping hand to poor little Psyche, wilfully seeking her own +salvation; will stand shoulder to shoulder with us on Marathon plain. But in +the main his sympathies are first for the beast: to which his horns are never +horrific, but, with his hairy pelt, ever natural and familiar, and his voice +(with its talk of help and healing) not harsh nor dissonant, but voice of very +brother as well as very god. +</p> + +<p> +And this declension—for declension it is, though we achieve all the confidences +of Melampus, and even master with him the pleasant <i>argot</i> of the +woods—may still be ours if we suffer what lives in us of our primal cousins to +draw us down. On the other hand, let soul inform and irradiate body as it may, +the threads are utterly shorn asunder never: nor is man, the complete, the +self-contained, permitted to cut himself wholly adrift from these his poor +relations. The mute and stunted human embryo that gazes appealingly from out +the depths of their eyes must ever remind him of a kinship once (possibly) +closer. Nay, at times, it must even seem to whelm him in reproach. As thus: +“Was it really necessary, after all, that we two should part company so early? +May you not have taken a wrong turning somewhere, in your long race after your +so-called progress, after the perfection of this be-lauded species of yours? A +turning whose due avoidance might perhaps have resulted in no such lamentable +cleavage as is here, but in some perfect embodiment of the dual nature: as who +should say a being with the nobilities of both of us, the basenesses of +neither? So might you, more fortunately guided, have been led at last up the +green sides of Pelion, to the ancestral, the primeval, Centaur still waiting +majestic on the summit!” It is even so. Perhaps this thing might once have +been, O cousin outcast and estranged! But the opportunity was long since lost. +Henceforth, two ways for us for ever! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap18"></a>Orion</h2> + +<p> +The moonless night has a touch of frost, and is steely-clear. High and dominant +amidst the Populations of the Sky, the restless and the steadfast alike, hangs +the great Plough, lit with a hard radiance as of the polished and shining +share. And yonder, low on the horizon, but half resurgent as yet, crouches the +magnificent hunter: watchful, seemingly, and expectant: with some hint of +menace in his port. +</p> + +<p> +Yet should his game be up, you would think by now. Many a century has passed +since the plough first sped a conqueror east and west, clearing forest and +draining fen; policing the valleys with barbed-wires and Sunday schools, with +the chains that are forged of peace, the irking fetters of plenty: driving also +the whole lot of us, these to sweat at its tail, those to plod with the patient +team, but all to march in a great chain-gang, the convicts of peace and order +and law: while the happy nomad, with his woodlands, his wild cattle, his +pleasing nuptialities, has long since disappeared, dropping only in his flight +some store of flint-heads, a legacy of confusion. Truly, we Children of the +Plough, but for yon tremendous Monitor in the sky, were in right case to forget +that the Hunter is still a quantity to reckon withal. Where, then, does he +hide, the Shaker of the Spear? Why, here, my brother, and here; deep in the +breasts of each and all of us! And for this drop of primal quicksilver in the +blood what poppy or mandragora shall purge it hence away? +</p> + +<p> +Of pulpiteers and parents it is called Original Sin: a term wherewith they +brand whatever frisks and butts with rude goatish horns against accepted maxims +and trim theories of education. In the abstract, of course, this fitful +stirring of the old yeast is no more sin than a natural craving for a seat on a +high stool, for the inscription—now horizontal, and now vertical—of figures, is +sin. But the deskmen command a temporary majority: for the short while they +shall hold the cards they have the right to call the game. And so—since we must +bow to the storm—let the one thing be labelled Sin, and the other Salvation—for +a season: ourselves forgetting never that it is all a matter of nomenclature. +What we have now first to note is that this original Waft from the Garden +asserts itself most vigorously in the Child. This it is that thrusts the small +boy out under the naked heavens, to enact a sorry and shivering Crusoe on an +islet in the duck-pond. This it is that sends the little girl footing it after +the gipsy’s van, oblivious of lessons, puddings, the embrace maternal, the +paternal smack; hearing naught save the faint, far bugle-summons to the +pre-historic little savage that thrills and answers in the tingling blood of +her; seeing only a troop of dusky, dull-eyed guides along that shining highway +to the dim land east o’ the sun and west o’ the moon: where freedom is, and you +can wander and breathe, and at night tame street lamps there are none—only the +hunter’s fires, and the eyes of lions, and the mysterious stars. In later years +it is stifled and gagged—buried deep, a green turf at the head of it, and on +its heart a stone; but it lives, it breathes, it lurks, it will up and out when +’tis looked for least. That stockbroker, some brief summers gone, who was +missed from his wonted place one settling-day! a goodly portly man, i’ faith: +and had a villa and a steam launch at Surbiton: and was versed in the esoteric +humours of the House. Who could have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? +Yet, after many weeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, +sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed and +weather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout with godless +native urchins; and when they would have won him to himself with honied +whispers of American Rails, he answered but with babble of green fields. He is +back in his wonted corner now: quite cured, apparently, and tractable. And +yet—let the sun shine too wantonly in Throgmorton Street, let an errant zephyr, +quick with the warm South, fan but his cheek too wooingly on his way to the +station; and will he not once more snap his chain and away? Ay, truly: and next +time he will not be caught. +</p> + +<p> +Deans have danced to the same wild piping, though their chapters have hushed +the matter up. Even Duchesses (they say) have “come tripping doon the stair,” +rapt by the climbing passion from their strawberry-leaved surroundings into +starlit spaces. Nay, ourselves, too—the douce, respectable mediocrities that we +are—which of us but might recall some fearful outbreak whose details are +mercifully unknown to the household that calls us breadwinner and chief? What +marvel that up yonder the Hunter smiles? When he knows that every one in his +ken, the tinker with the statesman, has caught his bugle blast and gone forth +on its irresistible appeal! +</p> + +<p> +Not that they are so easily followed as of yore, those flying echoes of the +horn! Joints are stiffer, maybe; certainly the desolate suburbs creep ever +farther into the retreating fields; and when you reach the windy moorland, lo! +it is all staked out into building-lots. Mud is muddier now than heretofore; +and ruts are ruttier. And what friendless old beast comes limping down the +dreary lane? He seems sorely shrunk and shoulder-shotten; but by the something +of divinity in his look, still more than by the wings despondent along his +mighty sides, ’tis ever the old Pegasus—not yet the knacker’s own. “Hard times +I’ve been having,” he murmurs, as you rub his nose. “These fellows have really +no seat except for a park hack. As for this laurel, we were wont to await it +trembling: and in taking it we were afraid. Your English way of hunting it down +with yelpings and hallooings—well, I may be out of date, but we wouldn’t have +stood that sort of thing on Helicon.” So he hobbles down the road. Good night, +old fellow! Out of date? Well, it may be so. And alas! the blame is ours. +</p> + +<p> +But for the Hunter—there he rises—couchant no more. Nay, flung full stretch on +the blue, he blazes, he dominates, he appals! Will his turn, then, really come +at last? After some Armageddon of cataclysmal ruin, all levelling, whelming the +County Councillor with the Music-hall artiste, obliterating the very furrows of +the Plough, shall the skin-clad nomad string his bow once more, and once more +loose the whistling shaft? Wildly incredible it seems. And yet—look up! Look up +and behold him confident, erect, majestic—there on the threshold of the sky! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGAN PAPERS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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