[Illustration: NIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA]

A TRAMP'S SKETCHES

BY

STEPHEN GRAHAM

1913

TO

"THE CELESTIALS"

PREFACE

This book was written chiefly whilst tramping along the Caucasian andCrimean shores of the Black Sea, and on a pilgrimage with Russianpeasants to Jerusalem. Most of it was written in the open air, sittingon logs in the pine forests or on bridges over mountain streams, bythe side of my morning fire or on the sea sand after the morning dip. It is not so much a book about Russia as about the tramp. It is thelife of the wanderer and seeker, the walking hermit, the rebelagainst modern conditions and commercialism who has gone out into thewilderness. 

I have tramped alone over the battlefields of the Crimea, visited thecemetery where lie so many British dead, wandered along the Black Seashores a thousand miles to New Athos monastery and Batum, have beenwith seven thousand peasant pilgrims to Jerusalem, and lived theirlife in the hospitable Greek monasteries and in the great Russianhostelry at the Holy City, have bathed with them in Jordan where allwere dressed in their death-shrouds, and have slept with them a wholenight in the Sepulchre. 

One cannot make such a journey without great experiences bothspiritual and material. On every hand new significances are revealed, both of Russian life and of life itself. 

It is with life itself that this volume is concerned. It is personaland friendly, and on that account craves indulgence. Here are thesongs and sighs of the wanderer, many lyrical pages, and the veryminimum of scientific and topographical matter. It is all writtenspontaneously and without study, and as such goes forth--all that aseeker could put down of his visions, or could tell of what he sought. 

There will follow, if it is given to the author both to write and topublish, a full story of the places he visited along the Black Seashore, and of the life of the pilgrims on the way to the shrine of theSepulchre and at the shrine itself. It will be a continuation of thework begun in _Undiscovered Russia_. 

Several of these sketches appeared in the _St. James's Gazette_, twoin _Country Life_, and one in _Collier's_ of New York, being sent outto these papers from the places where they were written. The authorthanks the Editors for permission to republish, and for their courtesyin dealing with MSS. 

STEPHEN GRAHAM. 

CONTENTS

I

1. FAREWELL TO THE TOWN2. NIGHTS OUT ON A PERFECT VAGABONDAGE3. THE LORD'S PRAYER4. DAYS5. THE QUESTION OK THE SCEPTIC6. A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER7. A STILL-CREATION-DAY8. SUNSET FROM THE GATE OF BAIDARI9. THE MEANING OF THE SEA

II

1. HOSPITALITY2. THE RICH MAN AND THE POOR MAN3. A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT4. SOCRATES OF ZUGDIDA5. "HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?"6. ST. SPIRIDON OF TREMIFOND7. AT A FAIR. 8. A TURKISH COFFEE-HOUSE9. AT A GREAT MONASTERY

III

1. THE BOY WHO NEVER GROWS OLD2. ZENOBIA3. THE LITTLE DEAD CHILD4. HOW THE OLD PILGRIM REACHED BETHLEHEM

IV

THE WANDERER'S STORY

(I. ) MY COMPANION. (II. ) HOW HE FOUND HIMSELFIN A COACH. (III. ) IRRECONCILABLES. (IV. ) THE TOWNSMAN. (V. ) HIS CONVERSION. 

V

THE UNCONQUERABLE HOPE

VI

THE PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM

VII

THE MESSAGE FROM THE HERMIT

 * * * * *

FRONTISPIECE

NIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA

I

I

FAREWELL TO THE TOWN

The town is one large house of which all the little houses are rooms. The streets are the stairs. Those who live always in the town arenever out of doors even if they do take the air in the streets. 

When I came into the town I found that in my soul were reflected itsblank walls, its interminable stairways, and the shadows of hurryingtraffic. 

A thousand sights and impressions, unbidden, unwelcome, floodedthrough the eye-gate of my soul, and a thousand harsh sounds andnoises came to me through my ears and echoed within me. I became awareof confused influences of all kinds striving to find some habitationin the temple of my being. 

What had been my delight in the country, my receptivity andhospitality of consciousness, became in the town my misery and mydespair. 

For imagine! Within my own calm mirror a beautiful world had seenitself rebuilded. Mountains and valleys lay within me, robed in sunnyand cloudy days or marching in the majesty of storm. I had inbreathedtheir mystery and outbreathed it again as my own. I had gazed at thewide foaming seas till they had gazed into me, and all their waveswaved their proud crests within me. Beauteous plains had tempted, mysterious dark forests lured me, and I had loved them and given themhabitation in my being. My soul had been wedded to the great strongsun and it had slumbered under the watchful stars. 

The silence of vast lonely places was preserved in my breast. Oragainst the background of that silence resounded in my being the roarof the billows of the ocean. Great winds roared about my mountains, orthe whispering snow hurried over them as over tents. In my valleys Iheard the sound of rivulets; in my forests the birds. Choirs of birdssang within my breast. I had been a playfellow with God. God hadplayed with me as with a child. 

Bound by so intimate a tie, how terrible to have been betrayed to atown!

For now, fain would the evil city reflect itself in my calm soul, itscommerce take up a place within the temple of my being. I had leftGod's handiwork and come to the man-made town. I had left theinexplicable and come to the realm of the explained. In the holytemple were arcades of shops; through its precincts hurried the trams;the pictures of trade were displayed; men were building hoardings inmy soul and posting notices of idol-worship, and hurrying throngs werereading books of the rites of idolatry. Instead of the mighty anthemof the ocean I heard the roar of traffic. Where had been mysteriousforests now stood dark chimneys, and the songs of birds were exchangedfor the shrill whistle of trains. 

And my being began to express itself to itself in terms of commerce. 

"Oh God, " I cried in my sorrow, "who did play with me among themountains, refurnish my soul! Purge Thy Temple as Thou didst inJerusalem of old time, when Thou didst overset the tables of themoney-changers. "

Then the spirit drove me into the wilderness to my mountains andvalleys, by the side of the great sea and by the haunted forests. Oncemore the vast dome of heaven became the roof of my house, and withinthe house was rebuilded that which my soul called beautiful. There Irefound my God, and my being re-expressed itself to itself in terms ofeternal Mysteries. I vowed I should never again belong to the town. 

As upon a spring day the face of heaven is hid and a storm descends, winds ruffle the bosom of a pure lake, the flowers droop, wet, thebirds cease singing, and rain rushes over all, and then anon the faceof heaven clears, the sun shines forth, the flowers look up in tears, the birds sing again, and the pure lake reflects once more the puredepth of the sky, so now my glad soul, which had lost its sun, foundit again and remembered its birds and its flowers. 

II

NIGHTS OUT ON A PERFECT VAGABONDAGE

I

I have been a whole season in the wilds, tramping or idling on theBlack Sea shore, living for whole days together on wild fruit, sleeping for the most part under the stars, bathing every morning andevening in the clear warm sea. It is difficult to tell the riches ofthe life I have had, the significance of the experience. I have feltpulse in my veins wild blood which my instincts had forgotten in thetown. I have felt myself come back to Nature. 

During the first month after my departure from the town I slept butthrice under man's roof. I slept all alone, on the hillside, in themaize-fields, in the forest, in old deserted houses, in caves, ruins, like a wild animal gone far afield in search of prey. I never knew inadvance where I should make my night couch; for I was Nature's guestand my hostess kept her little secrets. Each night a new secret wasopened, and in the secret lay some pleasant mystery. Some of themysteries I guessed--there are many guesses in these pages--some Ionly tried to guess, and others I could only wonder over. All mannerof mysterious things happen to us in sleep; the sick man is made well, the desperate hopeful, the dull man happy. These things happen inhouses which are barred and shuttered and bolted. The power of theNight penetrates even into the luxurious apartments of kings, eveninto the cellars of the slums. But if it is potent in these, how muchmore is it potent in its free unrestricted domain, the open country. He who sleeps under the stars is bathed in the elemental forces whichin houses only creep to us through keyholes. I may say from experiencethat he who has slept out of doors every day for a month, nay even fora week, is at the end of that time a new man. He has entered into newrelationship with the world in which he lives, and has allowed thegentle creative hands of Nature to re-shape his soul. 

The first of my nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggygrass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfootwas an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with thescent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and amwriting this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. Mylast night was in a deep cavern at the base of a high rock on a desertshore. 

The first night was warm and gentle, though it was followed by severalthat were stormy. Wrapped in my rug I felt not a shiver of cold, evenat dawn. As I lay at my ease, I looked out over the far southern seasinking to sleep in the dusk. The glistening and sparkling of thewater passed away--the sea became a great bale of grey--blue silk, soft, smooth, dreamy, like the garment of a sorceress queen. 

I slipped into sleep and slipped out again as easily as one goes fromone room to another, sometimes sleeping one hour or half an hour ata time, or more often one moment asleep, one moment awake, like themovement of a boat on the waves. 

Once when I wakened, I started at an unforeseen phenomenon. The moonin her youth was riding over the sea as bright as it is possible tobe, and down below her she wrote upon the waves and expressed herselfin new variety, a long splash of lemon-coloured light over the placidocean, a dream picture, something of magic. 

It was a marvellous sight, something of that which is indicated inpictures, but which one cannot recognise as belonging to the worldof truth--something impressionistic. To waken to see something sobeautiful is to waken for the first time, it is verily to be in partborn; for therein the soul becomes aware of something it had notpreviously imagined: looking into the mirror of Nature, it sees itselfanew. 

Where my sleeping-place would be had been a secret, and this was themystery in it, the further secret. I was definitely aware even on myfirst night out that I had entered a new world. 

To sleep, to wake and find the moon still dreaming, to see the moon'sdream in the water, to sleep again and wake, so--till the dawn. Suchwas my night under the old yews, the first spent with these southernstars on a long vagabondage. 

II

How different was last night, how full of weariness after heavytramping through leagues of loose stones. I had been tramping fromdesolate Cape Pitsoonda over miles and miles of sea holly and scrubthrough a district where were no people. I had been living oncrab-apples and sugar the whole day, for I could get no provisions. It is a comic diet. I should have liked to climb up inland to finda resting-place and seek out houses, but I was committed to theseashore, for the cliffs were sheer, and where the rivers made whatmight have been a passage, the forest tangles were so barbed that theywould tear the clothes off one's back. In many places the sea washedthe cliffs and I had to undress in order to get past. It was withresignation that I gave up my day's tramping and sought refuge for thenight in a deep and shapely cavern. 

There was plenty of dry clean sand on the floor, and there was anatural rock pillow. I spread out my blanket and lay at length, looking out to the sea. I lay so near the waves that at high tide Icould have touched the foam with my staff. I watched the sun go downand felt pleased that I had given up my quest of houses and food untilthe morrow. As I lay so leisurely watching the sun, it occurred to methat there was no reason why man should not give up quests when hewanted to--he was not fixed in a definite course like the sun. 

Sunset was beautiful, and dark-winged gulls continually alighted onthe glowing waves, alighted and swam and flew again till the night. Then the moon lightened up the sea with silver, and all night long thewaves rolled and rolled again, and broke and splashed and lapped. Thedeep cavern was filled with singing sounds that at first frightenedme, but at last lulled me to sleep as if a nurse had sung them. 

III

Between these two beds what a glorious Night picture-book, a booktelling almost entirely of the doings of the moon. I remember how Islept once under a wild walnut-tree. In front of me rose to heavenforested hills, and the night clothed them in majesty. Presently themoon came gently from her apartments and put out a slender hand, grasped the tree-tops, and pulled herself up over the world. Sheshowed herself to me in all her glory, and then in a minute was goneagain; for she entered into a many-windowed cloud castle and roamedfrom room to room. As she passed from window to window I knew by thelight where she was. A calm night. The moon went right across the skyand returned to her home. Rain came before the dawn, and then mistscrept down over the forests and hid them from my view. Cold, cold! Themountains were hidden by a cloud. Loose stones rolled down a cliffcontinually and a wind sighed. I snuggled myself into my blanket andwaited for an hour. Then the sun gained possession of the sky. 

I went down to the river, gathered sticks--they were very damp--andmade a fire. Once the fire began to burn it soon increased in size, for I had gathered a great pile of little twigs and they soon driedand burned. Then in their burning they dried bigger twigs, sticks, cudgels, logs. I boiled my kettle and made tea. 

Whilst I bathed in the river the sun gave a vision of his splendour: athousand mists trembled at his gaze. An hour later it was a very hotday, and the village folk coming out of their houses could scarcelyhave dreamed how reluctantly the night had retired at the dawn--withwhat cold and damp the morning had begun. 

IV

Another night, just after moonrise, a wind arose and drove in frontof it the whole night long a great thunderstorm, with lightnings androllings and grumblings and mutterings, but never a spot of rain. Atdawn, when I looked out to sea, I saw the whole dreadful array of thestorm standing to leeward like ships that had passed in the night, andas though baulked in pursuit the roll of the thunder came across thesky sullenly, though with a note of defeat. 

The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me tomake my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On theskirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial regionwhere the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned ofthe natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves onbark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At alittle settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logsoutside the village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up inall the clothes I possessed, and so saved myself from the damp. Nextmorning, however, my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wringit, though I had felt warm all night. I had always to guard againstthe possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasantproximity to some place of shelter--a bridge, a cave, or a house; andmore than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of thenight, and take up the alternative one in shelter. 

V

A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I lefthome. I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at theend of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, when suddenlyI looked up to the sky and saw the evening turning swiftly to nightbefore my eyes. The sun was not due to set, but the western horizonseemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it. A greatblack bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away thesun before his time. 

I hastened to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, forit was necessary to find a convenient night place. In a quarter of anhour it was night. At regular intervals all along the road were thebrightly lit lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature streetlights, the fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied byhedgehogs. 

I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep, watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; butI had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam oflightning. Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that hadovertaken the sun, coming forward into the night--eclipsing the sky. 

A storm? Would it reach me? My wishes prompted comforting answers andI lay and stared at the sky, trying to find reassurance. I did notfeel inclined to stir, but the clouds came on ominously. I marked outa bourne across the wide sky and resolved that if the shadow creptpast certain bright planets in the north, south, and centre, I wouldtake it as a sign, repack my wraps, and seek shelter in a farm-house. But the clouds came on and on. Slowly but surely the great armyadvanced and the lightnings became more frequent. My sky-line waspassed. I rose sorrowfully, put all my things in the knapsack, andtook the road once again. 

The lightning rushed past on the road and, blazing over the forests, lit up the wide night all around. Overhead the sky was cut across: inthe east was a perfectly clear sky except at the horizon where themoon seemed to have left behind fiery vapours; in the west andoverhead lay the dense black mass of the storm cloud. The clouds cameforward in regular array like an army. Nothing could hold them back;they came on--appallingly. And the moon looked at the steady advanceand her light gleamed upon the front ranks as if she were lightingthem with many lanterns. 

I had lain down to sleep quite sober-hearted, but now as thelightnings played around I began to feel as excited as if I were ina theatre--my blood burned. I had tired feet, but I forgot them. Iwalked swiftly. I felt ready to run, to dance. Very strangely therewas at the same time a presentiment that I might be struck bylightning. But all Nature was madly excited with me and also shared mypresentiment of destruction. We lived together like the victim and theaccomplices in a Dionysian sacrifice and orgy. 

And the clouds kept on gaining! Far away I heard the storm wind andthe clamour of the sea. The thunder moaned and sobbed. I hurried alongthe deserted road and asked my heart for a village, a house, a church, a cave, anything to shield from the oncoming drench. 

Spying a light far away on a hill, I left the road and plunged towardsit. I went over many maize-fields, by narrow paths through thetall waving grain, the lightning playing like firelight among thesheath-like leaves. I crossed a wide tobacco plantation and approachedthe light on the hill, by a long, heavily-rutted cart-track. This ledright up to the doors of a farmhouse. Big surly dogs came rushing outat me, but I clumped them off with my stick, and having much doubt inmy mind as to the sort of reception I should get, I knocked at thewindows and doors. I expected to be met by a man with a gun, for thedogs had made such a rumpus that any one might have been alarmed. 

The door was opened by a tall Russian peasant. 

"May I spend the night here?" I asked. 

The man smiled and put out his arms as if to embrace me. 

"Yes, of course. Why ask? Come inside, " he replied. 

"I thought of sleeping in the open air, " I added, "but the stormcoming up I saw I should be drenched. "

"Why sleep outside when man is ready to receive you?" said thepeasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny yourbrothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. Youshouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes upwith the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go allsoft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on youand you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thankedyou came to me. "

He asked me would I sleep in the house or on the maize straw. His sonsslept on the maize; it was covered, and so, sheltered from the rain. I could sleep in the house if I liked, but it was more comfortable onthe straw. His three sons slept there, but as it was a festival theyhad not come home yet. 

I agreed to the straw. My host led me to a sort of large open barn, abarn without walls, a seven-feet depth of hay and straw surmounted bya high roof on poles. 

"If you feel cold, or if the rain comes in, just burrow down under thestraw, " said the peasant. "Very glad I am that you have come to me, that you have done me the honour. Much better to ask hospitality thanto sleep out. "

I quite agreed it was much better to sleep with man on such a night. The lightnings were now all about--never leaving a second's puredarkness. The thunder grew more powerful and rolled forward from threesides. 

My host stood by me after I had lain down, a whole hour. He was mosthilarious, having partaken plentifully of festival fare. He warned merepeatedly against sleeping on the ground, and advised me to find barkor withered branches to lie upon if I would not seek shelter with man. The increasing storm did not seem to impress him in the slightest. Hewas all agog to tell me his family history and to compare the state ofagriculture in England with that in Russia. Only when his sons camehome and the heavy rain spots had begun to shower down upon him did hefinally shake my hand, wish me well, cross himself, and stump off backto the house. 

Three tall young men scrambled over me into the straw and buriedthemselves: two laughed and talked, the other was silent andfrightened. There was no sleep. The thunder grew louder and louder, and the lightning rushed over our faces like the sudden glare of asearchlight. All four of us put our faces to the straw to shut outthe light, and we tried to sleep. But we knew that the tempest at itsworst had yet to break. Suddenly came a sharp premonitory crash justabove us, near, astonishing. One of the young men, who had just dozedoff, woke up and scratched his head, saying--

"The little bear has got into the maize. Eh, brothers, this is goingto be a big piece of work. "

Then a great wind broke out of the sky and tore through the forestslike armies of wild beasts. The trees within our view bent down asif they would break in two; the moon above them was overswept by thecloud. When the moon's light had gone the night became darker and thelightning brighter. The framework of our shelter rocked to and fro inthe gale and we felt as if upon the sea; the straw and the hay jumpedup as if alive, and great lumps of thatch were rent out of the roof, showing the sky and letting in the rain. I looked for the ruin of ourshelter. 

But the hurricane passed on. The rain came in its place. The greatforty-day flood re-accomplished itself in an hour. We heard the beatof the rain on the earth: in ten minutes it was the hiss of the rainon the flooded meadows. By the sulphurous illuminations we saw almostcontinuously the close-packed, drenching rain. .. . The wet came in. We burrowed deep down into the straw and slept like some new sort ofanimal. 

VI

On other nights heavy rain came on unexpectedly, and I discovered howpleasant a bed may be made just under the framework of a bridge. Thebridge is a favourite resort of the Russian tramp and pilgrim, and Ihave often come across their comfortable hay or bracken beds there. Indeed I seldom go across a bridge at night without thinking there maybe some such as myself beneath it. 

When the weather is wet it is much more profitable to sleep in avillage--there is hospitality there, and the peasant wife gives youhot soup and dries your clothes. But often villages are far apart, andwhen you are tramping through the forest there may be twenty mileswithout a human shelter. I remember I found empty houses, and though Iused them they were most fearsome. I had more thrills in them than inthe most lonely resting-places in the open. Some distance from GagriI found an old ruined dwelling, floorless, almost roofless, but stillaffording shelter. I had many misgivings as I lay there. Was the househaunted? Was it some one else's shelter? Had some family lived thereand all died out? You may imagine the questions that assailed me, onceI had lain down. But whether evil was connected with the house orno, it was innocuous for me. Nothing happened; only the moon lookedthrough the open doorway; winds wandered among the broken rafters, andfar away owls shrieked. 

Again, on the way to Otchemchiri I came upon a beautiful cottage inthe forest and went to ask hospitality, but found no one there. Thefront door was bolted but the back door was open. I walked in and tooka seat. As there were red-hot embers in the fire some one had latelybeen there, and would no doubt come back--so I thought. But no onecame: twilight grew to night in loneliness and I lay down on the longsleeping bench and slept. It was like the house of the three bears butthat there was no hot porridge on the table. But no bears came; onlynext morning I was confronted by a half-dressed savage, a veritableCaliban by appearance but quite harmless, an idiot and deaf and dumb. I made signs to him and he went out and brought in wood, and we remadethe fire together. 

I have slept out in many places--in England, in the Caucasus whereit was amongst the most lawless people in Europe, in North Russianforests where the bear is something to be reckoned with--but I havenever come to harm. The most glorious and wonderful nights I ever hadwere almost sleepless ones, spent looking at the stars and tastingthe new sensations. Yet even in respect of rest it seems to me Ihave thriven better out of doors. There is a real tranquillity on amountain side after the sun has gone down, and a silence, even thoughthe crickets whistle and owls cry, though the wind murmurs in thetrees above or the waves on the shore below. The noises in houses areoften intolerable and one has to wait all every noise in the houseand in the street has died away. It is marvellous how easily onerecuperates in the open air. Even the cold untires and refreshes. Then, even if one lies awake, the night passes with extraordinaryrapidity. It is always a marvel to me how long the day seems bycomparison with the night when I sleep out of doors. A sleepless nightin a house is an eternity, but it is only a brief interlude under thestars. I believe the animal creation that sleeps in the field is so inharmony with nature and so unself-conscious that night does not seemmore than a quarter of an hour and a little cloudy weather. Perhapsthe butterflies do not even realise that night endures; darknesscomes--they sleep; darkness flees--they wake again. I think they haveno dreams. 

VII

It is peculiar, the tramp's feeling about night. When the sun goesdown he begins to have an awkward feeling, a sort of shame; he wantsto hide himself, to put his head somewhere out of sight. He finds hisnight place, and even begins to fall asleep as he arranges it. Hefeels heavy, dull. The thoughts that were bright and shapely by daybecome dark and ill-proportioned like shadows. He tosses a while, andstares at the stars. At last the stars stare at him; his eyes close;he sleeps. Three hours pass--it is always a critical time, three hoursafter sunset; many sleeping things stir at that time. His thoughtsare bright for a moment, but then fall heavy again. He wonders at themoon, and the moon wonders. She is hunting on a dark mountain side. 

The next sleep is a long one, a deep one, and ghosts may pass over thesleeper, imps dance on his head, rats nibble at his provisions; hewakes not. He is under a charm--nought of evil can affect him, forhe has prayed. Encompassed with dangers, the tramp always prays "OurFather, " and that he may be kept for the one who loves him. Prayersare strong out of doors at night, for they are made at heaven's gatein the presence of the stars. 

An hour before dawn a new awakening. Oh dear, night not gone! Thetramp is vexed. The moon has finished her hunting, and is going outof the night with her dark huntsmen; she passes through the gate. Peerless hunter!

The sky is full of light, a sort of dull, paper-lantern light. In anhour it will be morning. The side on which I have been lying is sore. I turn over and reflect joyfully that when next I wake it will be day. Moths are flitting in the dawn twilight: yes, in an hour it will beday. 

Ah, ha, ha! The sleeper yawns and looks up. There is blue in theclouds, pale blue like that of a baby's eyes. A cart lumbers along theroad, the first cart of the morning. I reflect that if I remain whereI am people may come and look at me. Ten minutes hesitation, and thensuddenly I make up my mind and rise. 

I feel a miserable creature, a despicable sort of person, one who haslately been beaten, a beggar who has just been refused alms. In thehalf-light of dawn it seems I scarcely have a right to exist. Or Ifeel a sort of self-pity. How often have I said as I gathered up mystiff limbs and damp belongings in the mist of the morning, "And thepoor old tramp lifts himself and takes to the road once more, trudge, trudge, trudge--a weary life!"

The mansion of my soul has been housing phantoms all the night. Theymay not stay after sunrise; they look out of my face with blearedeyes. It is they who gibber and chatter thus at dawn, leaving me withno more self-assurance than a man on ticket-of-leave. 

But as the sun comes up, behold the spirits evaporate, the films passaway from my eyes, and I am lighter, blither, happier, stronger. Thenin my heart birds begin to sing in chorus. I am myself once more. 

A fire, a kettle, and while the kettle boils, into the sea, giving mylimbs to the sparkling, buoyant water. Then am I super-self, if suchan expression may be permitted. So passes the vagabond's night. 

Thus somehow one comes into new harmony with Nature, and the personalrhythm enters into connection with all things that sleep and wakeunder the stars. One lives a new life. It is something like the changefrom bachelor to married life. You are richer and stronger. When youmove some one else moves with you, and that was unexpected. Whilst youlive Nature lives with you. 

I have written of the night, for the night hallows the day, and theday does not hallow the night except for those who toil. 

III

THE LORD'S PRAYER

The Lord's Prayer is a very intimate whispering of the soul with God. It is also the perfect child's prayer, and the tramp being much of achild, it is his. 

Many people have their private interpretations of the prayer, and Ihave heard preachers examine it clause by clause. It can mean manythings. It must mean different things to people of different lives. Itis something very precious to the tramp. 

The tramp is the lonely one: walking along all by himself all day bythe side of the sounding waves he is desolated by loneliness, andwhen he lies down at dusk all alone he feels the need of loving humanfriends. But his friends are far away. He becomes once more a littletrusting child, one who, though he fears, looks up to the face of agreat strong Father. He feels himself encompassed about by dangers:perhaps some one watched him as he smoothed out his bracken bed; or ifhe went into a cave a robber saw him and will come later in the night, when he is fast asleep, murder him, and throw his body into the sea;or he may have made his bed in the path of the bear or in the haunt ofsnakes. Many, many are the shapes of terror that assail the mind ofthe wanderer. How good to be a little boy who can trust in a greatstrong Father to "deliver him from evil"!

And each clause of that lovely prayer has its special reality. Thus"Give us this day our daily bread" causes him to think, not so much ofgetting wages on the morrow as of the kindly fruits of the earththat lie in the trees and bushes like anonymous gifts, and of thehospitality of man. 

Most beautiful of all to the tramp is the wish--"Thy Kingdomcome--Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven. " For it is thusunderstood: Thy Will be done in earth--I am that earth. "Thy Kingdomcome" means Thy Kingdom come in me--may my soul lie like a puremirror before the beauty of the world, may the beauty of the world bereflected in me till the whole beautiful world is my heart. Then shallmy heart be pure, and that which I see will be God. Thy Will be donein me as it is done in heaven. 

And the tramp asks himself as he lies full length on the earth andlooks up at the stars--are you a yea-sayer? Do you say "Yes" to life?Do you raise your face in wonder to the beauty of the world? Do youstand with bare feet in sacred places? Do you remember always themystery and wonder that is in your fellow-man whom you meet upon theroad? . .. "Hallowed be Thy Name. "

Does the wanderer love all things? It is a condition of all thingsloving him. He must have perfect peace in his heart for the kingdom tobe built there. .. . "Forgive us our trespasses. "

We may be tempted to forget Thee, may fear danger and our hearts beruffled, may be tempted to forget that our fellow-man is one likeourselves, with our mystery and wonder, and having a very loving humanheart either apparent or prevented. We may be tempted to forget themystery of our own souls. The tramp prays to be led not into suchtemptation. For, with the Father above him, is the power, the kingdom, and the glory, for ever and ever. As I said, prayers are strong out ofdoors, made in the presence of all the stars. One is compassed aboutwith a great cloud of witnesses. There is calm all around and in one'sown heart. The mysterious beauty of the starry sky reflects itselfin the soul, and across its mirror sails the pale moon. My own bodybecomes a cradle in which the little Christ Child sleeps. There areangels everywhere. I am in universal keeping, for the stars are alllooking and pointing to me. Because of the little Child the shepherdsnear by hear heavenly harmony, and journeying through the night to theland of dreams come the three wonderful old kings with gifts. 

IV

DAYS

It is because I have been tempered by the coldness of the night that Iam not overwhelmed by the heat of the day. Because the night is darkand cool and sweet I see the true colours of the day, and the noon sundoes not dazzle me. The tramp's eyes open and then they open again: atmidday his eyes are wider than those of indoor folk. He is nearer tothe birds because he has slept with them in the bush. They also arenearer to him, for the night has left her mysterious traces upon hisface and garments, something which humans cannot see, not even thetramp himself, but which the wild things recognise right enough. 

The tramp walks. His road is one that may only be walked upon. Peopleon wheels are never on it: at least, I never met a wheel person whohad seen on either side of the road what the tramp sees--and a road isnot only a path, but that which is about it. The wheel is the greatenemy of Nature, whether it be the wheel of a machine or of a vehicle. Nature abhors wheels. She will not be wooed by cyclists, motorists, goggled motor-cyclists, and the rest: she is not like a modern younglady who, despite ideals, _must_ marry, and will take men as they arefound in her day and generation. 

The woman of the woods who dresses herself in flowers, and whose voiceis as birds' songs, is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow--notnew-fangled. You must go to her; she will not come to you. You mustlive as she does. 

Therefore the tramp moves _naturally_, on his feet. He comes intostep. And sleeping out of doors, living in the sun, eating forestberries, washing in the stream or in the sea, all these are part of acoming into step. 

How this _coming back_ develops the temperament! I left the towntimid, almost a townsman, expecting not only the dangers that were butalso all those that were not. I half believed all the tales by whichstay-at-home people tried to warn or frighten me. Though taking theroad with every aspect of carelessness and boldness, I confessed to myheart that I was a coward. Then came my first week's tramping, and Iemerged a different man. I felt bold. A few days later still I nurseda stick in my hand, saying, "If a robber comes, let him come! We'llhave a struggle. " Leaving the town I scanned the faces of thepassers-by apprehensively, and said "Good-morning" or "Good-evening"very meekly to all dangerous-looking persons, but a fortnight laterI was even strutting on the road with a smile almost malicious on mylips. 

I felt myself growing wilder. The truth broke upon me in anintrospective moment one morning as I was nearing Sotchi. I felt I hadchanged. I stopped to take stock of my new life and ways. I had beenliving in the forest and on the seashore, away from mankind, onNature's gifts. All my days from dawn to sunset I hunted for food. Mylife was food-hunting. I certainly wrote not a line and thought less. In my mind formed only such elementary ideas as "Soon more grapes, ""These berries are not the best, " "More walnuts, " "Oh, a spring; Imust drink there. "

Something from the ancient past was awakened. I saw a bunch of wildgrapes, my heart leapt, and without a thought I jumped to it and tookit. Or I saw a fresh trickling stream pouring over the ledges of therocks, and I rushed and pressed my lips to the bubbling water. Therewas no intermediary between Nature's gifts and the man who neededthem. Wish was translated into act without the aid of thought. 

One day I was lost in the forest among the giant tangles and I was notat all anxious to find the way out again. Perhaps I might havelived there all the Autumn, and only when the berries and nuts wereexhausted and the cold winter winds sought me out should I comeskulking back to the haunts of men like some wild animal made tame byWinter. 

I was aware, therefore, of a new experience, a modification inpersonality, a change of rhythm. I was walking with Nature, marchingwith her, with all her captains the great trees and her infantry thelittle bushes, and I caught in my ears her marching music. I wasthrilled by the common chord that makes crowds act as one man, that inthis case made my heart beat in unison with all the wild things. I mayas well say at once I love them all and am ready to live with them andfor them. 

V

THE QUESTION OF THE SCEPTIC

"That's all very well, but don't you often get bored?" asked asceptic. "I enjoy a weekend in the country, or a good Sunday tramp inRichmond Park or Epping Forest. I take my month on the Yorkshire moorswith pleasure, or I spend a season in Switzerland or Spain, and Idon't mind sleeping under a bush and eating whatever I can get inshepherds' cottages. I can well appreciate the simple life and thecountry life, but I'm perfectly sure I should pine away if I had tolive it always. I couldn't stand it. I'd rather be debarred from thecountry altogether than not go back to town. The town is much moreindispensable to me. I feel the country life is very good in so far asit makes one stronger and fitter to work in town again, but as an endin itself it would be intolerable. "

This was a question I needed to answer not only to the sceptic but tomyself. It is true the wanderer often feels bored, even in beautifulplaces. I am bored some days every year, no matter where I spend them, and I shall always be. I get tired of this world and want another. That is a common feeling, if not often analysed. 

There is, however, another boredom, that of the weariness of the body, or its satiety of country air; the longing for the pleasures of thetown, the tides of the soul attracted by the moon of habit. The trampalso confesses to that boredom. But when he gets back to the town toenjoy it for a while he swiftly finds it much more boring than thecountry. 

If every one went to the country and lived the simple life when he wasinclined, the size of European towns would be diminished to very smallproportions. The evil of a town is that it establishes a tyranny andkeeps its people against the people's true desires. 

I said to my sceptical friend: "Those who praise the simple life andthose who scoff at it are both very extravagant as a rule. Let thematter be stated temperately. The tramp does not want a world oftramps--that would never do. The tramps--better call them the rebelsagainst modern life--are perhaps only the first searchers for newlife. They know themselves as necessarily only a few, the pioneers. Let the townsman give the simple life its place. Every one willbenefit by a little more simplicity, and a little more living incommunion with Nature, a little more of the country. I say, 'Come toNature altogether, ' but I am necessarily misunderstood by those whofeel quickly bored. Good advice for all people is this--live thesimple life as much as you can _till you're bored_. Some people aresoon bored: others never are. Whoever has known Nature once and lovedher will return again to her. Love to her becomes more and more. "

But whoever has resolved the common illusions of the meaning of life, and has seen even in glimpses the naked mystery of our being, findsthat he absolutely must live in the world which is outside city walls. He wants to explore this desert island in space, and with it toexplore the unending significance of his deathless spirit. 

VI

A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER

Rostof on the Don is always beautiful when one leaves it to go south. Nothing can efface from my mind the picture of it as I saw it whenfirst going to the Caucasus. The sunset illumined it with the hues ofromance. All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if litup from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellowsbecame burning living colours. The town lay spread out upon the highbanks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church. The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight and the crosses above them werechanged into pure fire. Round about the town stretched the grey-greensteppe, freshened by the river-side, but burned down to the sufferingearth itself on the horizon. Then over all, like God's mercyharmonising man's sins, the effulgence of a light-blue southern sky. 

By that scene I have understood the poet's thought--

 To draw one beauty into the heart's core And keep it changeless. 

 * * * * *

Yet how transient is the appearance of beauty. It has an eternity notin itself but in the heart. Thus I look out at the ever-changing oceanand suddenly, involuntarily ejaculate, "How beautiful!" yet beforeI can call another to witness the scene it has changed. Only in theheart the beauty is preserved. Thus we see a woman in her youth andbeauty, and then in a few years look again and find her worn and old. The beauty has passed away; its eternity is in the heart. 

We have a choice, to live in the shadow and shine of the outer lifewhere visions fade, or to live with all the beauty we have ever known, where it is treasured, in the heart. Choosing the former we at lastperish with the world, but choosing the latter we ourselves receive animmortality in the here and now. The one who chooses the latter shallnever grow old, and the beauty of his world can never pass away. 

 * * * * *

Nietzsche could not tolerate the doctrine of the "immaculateperception" of Beauty. To him Beauty was _une promesse de bonheur_;Beauty was a lure and a temptation, it had no virtue in itself, butits value lay in the service rendered to the ulterior aims of Nature. Thus the beauty hung in woman's face was a device of the Life-forcefor the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strangeends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and namedas the Superman. Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation ofman's will. The Kantian conception of the disinterested contemplationof Beauty Nietzsche likened to the moon looking at the earth at nightand giving the earth only dreams; but the Stendhalian conception ofBeauty as a promise of happiness he likened to the sun looking at theearth and causing her to bear fruit. 

Darwin as much as said, "Beauty has been the gleam which the instinctof the race has followed in its upward development. Beauty has beenthe genius of Evolution. " Thus science has lent its authority tophilosophy. The idea is charming. In its power it is irresistible. Itcertainly dominates modern literary art, being the principal dynamicof Ibsen and Bernard Shaw and all their followers. 

It is a very important matter. There can be nothing more important inliterary art, and indeed in one's articulate conception of the meaningof life, than the notion of what is beautiful. What if this conceptionbe narrow, what if it be simply a generalisation, a generalisationfrom too few observations? What if the wish were father to thethought?

The only test of philosophy and art is experience. And it is thewanderer, the life-explorer without irrelevant preoccupations, whois the true naturalist, collecting experiences and making maps forspiritual eyes. What then does the wanderer note?

First, that the knowledge of the beautiful is an affirmation. Something in the soul suddenly rises up and ejaculates "Yes" to someoutside phenomenon, and then he is aware that he is looking at Beauty. As he gazes he knows himself in communion with what he sees--sometimesthat communion is a great joy and sometimes a great sadness. Thus, looking at the opening of dawn he is filled with gladness, his spiritsrising with the sun; he wishes to shout and to sing. He is one withthe birds that have begun singing and with all wild Nature wakingrefreshed after the night. But looking out at evening of the same dayover the grey sea he is failed with unutterable sorrow. 

I remember how all night long in the North region, where the lightdoes not leave the sky, I looked out at the strange beauty of thewhite night and felt all the desolateness of the world, all theexiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. TheAeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me andplayed unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lostfamily, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "Weare all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royalseals. Sometime or other we were abandoned on this beautiful garden, the world. We expected some one to return for us; but no one came. We lived on, and to forget homesickness devised means of pleasure, diversions, occupations, games. Some have entirely forgotten the lostheritage and the mystery of their abandonment; their games absorbedthem, they have become gamblers, they have theories of chance, theirtalk is all of Progress of one sort or another. They forget the greatmystery of life. We tramps and wanderers remember. It is our religionto remember, to count nothing as important beside the initial mystery. For us it is sweeter to remember than to forget. The towns wouldalways have us forget, but in the country we always remember again. What is beautiful is every little rite that reminds us of ourmysteries. "

This is a most persistent experience, and Beauty thereby promises ushappiness, but in a strange way seems to tell of happiness past. Itlures not forward unless to the exploration of the "prison-house" oncemore. 

Even the beauty of woman is not always a lure. There is a beauty inwoman which makes one glad, but there is the beauty that haunts onelike a great sadness, besides the beauty that draws one nearer to her. There is the seductive beauty of Cleopatra, but there is also thealmost repulsive beauty of Medea, and besides both there is themysterious beauty of Helen or of Eve. 

Beauty is also a great possession, and that is another conception, another mystery. We lie like a mirror in the presence of Beauty, andit builds the very temple of our souls. Beauty is the gold of earthlyexperience. It is essentially that which in looking round our eyeslike best, that which they say swiftly "Yes" to. We enter intocommunion with the beautiful as with a beloved object. We make itpart of ourselves. We absorb it into that which is integral andimmortal--our very essence. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: itsloveliness can never pass away" is a truth of experience, not theidle fancy of the poet. For to have seen the beautiful is notinconsequential, it is not even a responsibility entirely your own;the beautiful thing has also seen you. Henceforth your life can neverbe quite the same, and the beautiful thing looked upon has eitherbecome less or more beautiful. 

VII

A STILL-CREATION-DAY

The blue-green sea is living velvet, and full of light-rings; itgoes out to a distant mauve horizon, near which sea-gulls with whitegleaming wings are flying. Many gulls are fluttering on the red buoysin the water. 

It is late in a December afternoon on the south coast of the Crimea. It is Yalta, beloved of all Russians, and I have come tramping toit--which Russians never do--and I am intending to spend lazy dayslooking with the gay town and all its white villas at the gloriousspectacle of the southern sea. All the rest of Russia is gripped bywinter, but here there is sanctuary and forgiveness. I have beentramping on the cold, cold steppes, frozen, forced to get back intomyself and hide like the trees, and when I came here it seemed somehowas if Nature herself had been angry with me, relented, and was nowshowing me all her tenderness again. All along the road I foundviolets in the little bushes, and I wore them as a forgiveness giftfrom a woman that I love. 

When a woman smiles upon a man she bids him live, and when she frownshe can but die. To-day the woman of all women has smiled on me, Natureherself. 

Along the road I had that pleasant life with myself that one has theday after one's birthday, when one has kept good resolutions two days. My old self carried, as it were, within me a little child, and thechild chattered and lisped to me. 

Delightful tramping along a road high over the shore! Below me, stretching far to East and to West, blue and glorious like summer, wasthe immense sea, all in dazzling radiance under the noonday sun. Abank of grey-blue mist lay over the South, and marked the domain wherewinter was felt. Up above me stood great grey rocks, stained here andthere the colour of rose porphyry. The tops of these rocks, even hereas I look up at them from Yalta, are outlined with a bright whiteline--winter and hoar-frost hold sway there also. 

I have been in the sight of nut-brown hillsides, something absolutelyperfect, the warm living colour of thousands of little, closelypacked French oak trees, all withered, and holding still their littlewithered leaves. The colour of these hills was the colour of Nature'seyes. 

There was silence too--such wonderful silence, one could hear one'sown heart beating. Such a morning was indeed what Richter calls a"still-creation-day, " that still silence of the heart that prefacesnew revelation, as the brooding of the dove on the waters the creationof a world. You must know I saw the dawn, and have been with the sunall day. I slept at a Greek coffee-house, but was up whilst the skywas yet dark and the waves all cloudy purple. There was just one gleamof light in the dark sky, just one little promise. The great cliffswere all in their night cloaks, and night shapes were on the road. AllNature was in the night world, and I felt as if I were continuing mylast night's tramping, and not starting upon a new day. Yet in thenight of my heart was also just that one gleam of whiteness in theEast, one little promise. I knew the whiteness must get more and more, and the darkness less and less. I stood on the cliff road and watchedthe waves become all alive, playing with their shadows as the lightdiffused in the sky, and the white lines of the East turned to rosyribbons. Then the dawn twilight came and the night shapes slunk away. The Tartars and Greeks took down their shutters in the little villagehard by. 

The sea became green, the rocks all grey, and then, as I watched, therim of the sun rose over the horizon and the sea held it as a scimitarof fire. The white disc rose, a miracle; it looked very large, as ifit had grown bigger in the night. It paused a moment in the sea andthen suddenly seemed to bound up from it: it flooded the world withlight. Then, as if from his hands angels were leaping, thousands ofgulls were descried on the sea, their gleaming wings seeming to be thevery meaning of morning. Out of the sea under the dawn, dark dolphinscame leaping toward the shore. The sea became a grey expanse overwhich the sun made a silver roadway. There commenced the quiet, quietmorning, and the still-creation-day. 

Now the day is ending, and the sun goes down behind the hills atYalta, the mist bank over the southern horizon catches the reflectionof true sunset tints, and transmits them to the velvety water, full oflight-rings. I have been sitting on a pleasure seat on the sand allthe afternoon, and now I go to the end of the long pier. There one maysee another vision of the mystery of the day, for the sea-waves arefull of living autumn colours, of luminous withered leaves and fadedrose petals; they are still living velvet, the night garment of aqueen. Black ducks are swimming mysteriously on the glowing duskywater. 

In a moment, however, the scene has changed and the colours have beenwithdrawn. The presence in the world, the queen whom we call Day, haspassed over the waves and disappeared; not even a fold of the longtrain of her dress is visible. 

Some one has lighted a Roman candle at the far end of the pier, asa signal to a steamer whose white and red lanterns have just beendescried upon the dark horizon. It is night: the day is over. 

VIII

SUNSET FROM THE GATE OF BAIDARI

It was at the Gate of Baidari in the Crimea on the shortest day ofthe year that I saw the most wonderful sunset I have ever known, andentered most completely into the spirit of the dark, quiet night. 

It was another vision of the sea, a presentment of the sea's questionin a new light. 

A mild December afternoon. I had been some days wandering acrosspleasant tree-brown valleys and immense hollows mountain-walled. Inthe winter silence there was no murmur of the ocean, not even wasthere saltness in the air. I was out of the sight of the sea and hadbeen so for several days. But this afternoon I climbed by a long roadwhere were many berberry bushes vermilion with their berries, up tothe pass over the hills, and there all at once by surprise, withoutthe least expecting it, at a turn of the road I had a revelation ofthe whole sea. 

It was a ravishment of the eyes, a scene on which one looks, at whichone stares. The road came suddenly to a precipice, and sheer down, twothousand feet below, the waves foamed forward on the rocks, and fromthe foam to the remote horizon lay the mysterious sleeping sea--no, not sleeping, but rather causing all else to sleep in its presence, for it was full of serpent lines all moving toward the shore. Thewhole wild mountainous Crimean shore sat before the sea and dreamed. 

And I realised slowly all that was in the evening. Below me lay thewhite tortuous road leading downward to the shore in coils, andclothing the road, the many woods, all hoary white because the sharpsea-breeze had breathed on them. Evening had long since settled on theroad and on the wintry trees; it lay also about the grey temple whichthe Russians have put up on one of the platforms of the lower cliffs. The church looked so compact and small down below me that it seemedone could have held it in the palm of the hand. It was sunset, but thesky was full of blue-grey colour. The whole South caught a radiancefrom the hidden West and the sea was grey. 

In a moment it is noticeable that the south is becoming rosier. Thesea is now alight from the increase of sunset hues. In the shadow thelines of the sea are a sequence of wavings like the smoke of the snowblown over the steppes. In the hurrying clouds a great space clears, and along the south-west runs a great rosy fleece of sunset. It israpidly darkening. The sea in the western corner is crimson, but allthe vast south is silver and sombre. The horizon is like that seenfrom a balloon--pushed out to its furthermost, and there, where cloudsand sky mingle, one sees fantastically as it were the sides of giant, shadowy fish. 

The motor-coach, with its passengers from Sebastopol to Yalta, comesrushing and grumbling up behind me and stops five minutes, this beingits half-way point. The passengers adjourn into the inn to drinkvodka: "Remember, gentlemen, five minutes only, " says the chauffeur. "God help any one who gets left behind at Baidari. .. . " Four minuteslater there is a stamping of fat men in heavy overcoats round thebrightly varnished 'bus. "Are we going?" says a little man to therefreshed but purple-faced chauffeur. "Yes!" "That's good. I've hadenough of this. " The guard winds his horn, and after a preliminarysquirm of the plump tyres on the soft road, the vehicle and itscompany goes tumbling down the road as if it were descending into apit. 

And the sunset! It develops with every instant. The lines on the seaseem to move more quickly, and the spaces between them to be larger. The west is full of storm. A closing cloud comes up out of the west:the western sea is utterly hopeless, the moving south inexorable. There is terror in the west. 

Evening is more below me than above me. Night is coming to me over thedark woods. The foam on the rocks below is like a milk-white robe. As I walk the first miles downhill I begin to hear the sound of thewaves. The sea is beginning to roar, and the wind rushing up to metells me that the lines of the sea are its stormy waves ridden forwardto the shore by a gale. 

I stood on the platform where the many-domed temple was built, andwatched the gathering night. Unnumbered trees lay beneath me, but itwas so dusk I hardly knew them to be trees. The gigantic black cliffthat shuts off the west stood blank into the heaven like a great door:to the east lay the ghostly fading coast-line of Aloopka. Among theblack clouds overhead danced out happy fires, and, answering theirbrightness, windows lighted up in cottages far below, and lanternsgleamed on a little steamer just puffing over the horizon. 

There came the pure December evening with frost and Christmas bells, and happy hearths somewhere in the background. The one star in the skywas a beckoning one: my heart yearned. 

I dipped down upon the road, and in a few minutes was looking at thetemple from below, seeing it entirely silhouetted against the sky. Itwas now indeed held up in a giant's palm and looked at. 

Far out at sea now lay a silver strand; the lines of the waves wereall curves and heavily laden with shadows--they were, indeed, waves. Far above me the cliffs that I had left were mist-hidden, and in themidst shone a strange light from the last glow of sunset in the unseenwest. 

Night. At a word the sea became lineless and shapeless. The sunset skywas green-blue, and black strips of cloud lay athwart it. Looking upto the crags above me, I missed the church: it was in heaven or in theclouds. A great wind blew, and ceased, and came no more--the one gustthat I felt of a whole day's storm on the coast. Night chose to becalm, and though all the waves called in chorus upon the rocks, therewas a silence and a peace within the evening that is beyond all words. 

I walked with the night. I walked to find an inn, and yet cared notthat the way was far and that men dwelt not in these parts. Forsomething had entered into me from Nature, and I had lived an extralife after the day was done. It was not one person alone that, pack onback, walked that dark and quiet Crimean road. And the new spiritthat was with me whispered promises and lingered over secretshalf-revealed. I came to know that I should really enter into it, andbe one with it, that I should be part of a description of night andpart of night itself. 

At one of the many turnings of the road I came upon five dreamywaggons, and Tartar waggoners walked by the horses, for their loadswere heavy. I made friends with the third waggoner, and he asked meto carry his whip and take his place whilst he talked with one of hismates. For eight miles I walked by the side of the plodding horses, and encouraged them or whipped them, coaxed or scolded them, as theyslowly dragged their lumberous merchandise along the dark and heavyroads. 

I almost fell asleep, but at an inn half-way I drank tea with thewaggoners "cheek by jowl and knee by knee, " and they saw me as one ofthemselves. 

Once more on the road--we went nearly all the way to Aloopka. TheTartars sang songs, the beasts of burden toiled; on one side thecliffs overwhelmed us, and on the other lay the dark sea on which thestars were peeping. The still night held us all. 

IX

THE MEANING OF THE SEA

I

It is good to live ever in the sight of the sea. I have been trampingtwo months along seashores, and living a daily life in the presenceof the Infinite. From Novorossisk to Batoum, eight hundred and fiftyversts, I have explored all that coast of the Black Sea that lies atthe feet of the Caucasus--to left of me the snow-peaked mountainsshoulder to shoulder under heaven, to right the resplendent, magnificent sea. 

"The sea cannot be described, " wrote Chekhov; "I once read ina child's copy-book an essay on the sea, four words and a fullstop--'The sea is large'--and whenever I attempt a description, I amobliged to confess that I can do no better than the child. " The factis, the sea describes us; that is why we cannot describe it. It is, itself, language and metaphor for the telling of our own longings andour own mysteries. In the sound of the waves is only the song of man'slife; in the endless variety of its appearance only the story of ourown mystery. 

Thus the sea is all things. They call this the Black Sea, and atevening when the clouds in the high heaven are reflected in it, it isindeed black. But it should be called the many-coloured, for indeed itis all colours. In the full heat of noon, as I write, it is white; itis covered with half-visible vapour through which a greenness is lostin pallor. The horizon is the black line of a broken arc. Other daysit is blue as a great ripe plum, and the horizon is faint-pink, likedown. On cloudy afternoons it is grey with unmingled sorrow; in earlymorning it is joyous as a young child. I have seen it from a distancepiled up to the sky like a wall of hard sapphire. I have seen itnear at hand faint away from the shore, colourless, lifeless, in theheart-searching of its ebb tide. It is all things, at all times, andto all persons. 

II

At Dzhugba the sea was quiet as a little lake; at Dagomise it wasmany-crested and thundering in the majesty of storm. At Gudaout thesun rose over it as it might have done on the first morning of theworld. 

Every dawning I bathed, and each bathing was as a new baptism. And inmultifarious places it was given to me to bathe; at Dzhugba, where thesun shone fiercely on green water and the dark seaweed washed to andfro on the rocks; at Olginka, the quietest little bay imaginable, where the sea was so clear that one could count the stones below it, the rippling water so crystalline that it tempted one to stoop downand drink--a dainty spot--even the stones, on long curves of theshore, seemed to have been nicely arranged by the sea the nightbefore, and far as I swam out to sea I saw the bottom as throughglass. 

How different at Dagomise! All night long it had thundered. I sleptunder a wooden bridge that spanned a dried-up river. The lightningplayed all about me, the rain roared, the thunder crashed overhead. The storm passed, but as the thunder died away from the sky, it brokeout from the sea and roared deafeningly all around. I could not bathe, for the sea was tremendous. A grand sight presented itself at dawn, the sea foaming forwards in thousands of billows. Along five miles ofseashore the white horses galloped forward against the rocks, as ifthe whole sea were an army arrayed against the land. How the whitepennons flew!

Later in the morning I undressed, and sitting in moderate safety on ashelf of rock, let the spent billows rush over me. The waves rushedup the steep beach like tigers for their prey, their eyes turned awayfrom mine, but full of cruelty and anger. I was, deep in myself, afear'd. 

At what an extraordinary rate the waves rushed up the shore, fastgalloping after one another, accomplishing their fates! There isonly one line I know that tells well of their rate, that glory ofSwinburne:--

 Where the dove dipped her wing and the oars won their way, Where the narrowing Symplègades whiten the straits of Propontis with spray. 

III

At Osipovka, where I spent a whole long summer day sitting on a log onthe seashore, I saw a vision of the sea and nymphs--a party of peasantgirls came down and bathed. They were very pretty and frolicsome, taking to the water in a very different style from educated women. They were boisterous and wild. They went into the sea backwards, andlet the great waves knock them down; they lay down and were buffetedby the surf; they ran about the shore, sang, shouted, yelled, wavedtheir arms; they dived headlong into the waves, swam hand over handamong them, pulled one another by the legs. The sea does not know howto play games: it seemed like an ogre with his twelve princesses. Theymade sport of him, pulled his beard and his hair, tempted and evadedhim, mocked him when he grabbed at them, befooled him when he capturedthem. I used to have an idea of nymphs behaving very artistically withreally drawing-room manners, but I saw I was wrong. Nymphs are onlyartistic and alluring singly--one nymph on a rock before a gallantprince. 

In numbers they are absolutely wild and have no manners at all. Luckyold ogre, to possess twelve such princesses, I thought; but as Ilooked at the gleam of their limbs as they mocked, and heard theirhard laughter, I found him to be but a pitiable old greybeard, for helooked at beauty that he could scarce comprehend and never possess. The beauty of life has power greater than the beauty of the sea. 

IV

One night after I had made my bed on a grassy sand-bank above the seaand was waiting, in the thrilling and breathless twilight, to fallasleep, I suddenly heard a sound as of a child weeping somewhere. Myheart bounded in horror. I lay scarce daring to breathe, and then whenthere was silence again, looked up and down the shore for the personwho had cried. But I saw no one. I listened--listened, expecting tohear the cry again, but only the waves turned the stones, broke, rolled up, and turned the stones again. Evening crept over the sea, and the waves looked dark and shadowy; the silence grew more intense. I turned on one side to go to sleep, and then once more came a sad, despairing human cry as of a lost child. I sat bolt upright and lookedabout me, and even then, whilst I stared, the cry came again, andfrom the sea. "Is it possible there is a child down by the waves?" Ithought, and I tried to distinguish some little human shape in thedarkness that seemed hastening on the shoulders of the incoming waves. There came a terrible wail and another silence. I dared not go andsearch, but I lay and shuddered and felt terribly lonely. The wavesfollowed one another and followed again, ever faster and faster as itseemed in the darkness--

 Still on each wave followed the wave behind, And then another behind, And then another behind. .. . 

They came forward fantastically, and I felt as if I were lying in thepresence of something most ancient, most terrible. 

Presently a bird with great dark wings flew noiselessly just over myhead, and then over the sea rose the moon, young, new drest, and Iforgot the strange cry in the presence of a familiar friend. It was asif a light had been brought into one's bedroom. Probably the cry wasthat of an owl; it came no more. I slept. 

V

There was my walk to the forlorn and lonely monastery of Pitsoonda onthe promontory where the great lighthouse burns. Along the seashorewere swamps overgrown with bamboos and giant grasses, twelve feethigh. The sea was grey and calm. Lying on the sand, one saw thereflection, or the refracted images, of the grey stones at the bottomof the sea for twenty yards out and more. The sea had no power, itsplashed in weak and hopeless waves, sucked itself away inward, cameback again with a little run, and feebly toppled over. The high-waterline was shown by a serpentine strip of jetsam winding along the wholeof the shore. There was no yellow in the sands; clouds and sunshinestruggled overhead, but beneath them all was grey. The wind rustled inthe giant grasses like the sound of men on horseback, so that I wascontinually looking behind in apprehension. 

 A land that is lonelier than ruin, A sea that is stranger than death. 

At a lonely house, half-way to the monastery, I thought to obtainbread, but as I approached it twelve large brown mastiffs rushed outand assailed me. I was in a pitiable plight, warding them off with mystick, and did not escape without bites. I called for help, and someone then whistled from a window and called the dogs back. I don'tfear dogs, but these were powerful animals, and withal a tremendoussurprise. I must have had a bad time had no one called them away. 

I came to the river Bzib, deep and fast-running, and rowed myselfacross in a leaky and muddy boat. I ploughed my way through deepsand, or stepped from boulder to boulder, or crushed through miles ofsea-holly and prickly shrub. I came to the sacred wood in which theAhkbasians used to pray when they were pagans, but in which, sincetheir conversion, they have chiefly committed murder. I passed throughthree strange woods, the first of juniper and wild pear; the second, all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn, but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; thethird, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to thefar verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were likewoods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particularelves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of theearth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and thewild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nailshad never been clipped; the third, queenly, as if beloved of Diana. 

Evening grew to night as I plodded past these woods or struggledthrough them. The temptation was to go into the wood and walk onfirmer soil--but the thickets were many, and not a furlong did itprofit me. Then there were thorns, you must know, and abundantlong-clawed creepers that grasped the legs and kept them fixedtill they were tenderly extricated by the hand. When I came to thepine-wood it was night, and the many stars shone over the sea. Iwalked easily and gratefully over the soft pine needles, and Iconstantly sought with my eyes for the monastery domes. The moonlightthrough the pines looked like mist, and the forest climbed graduallyover rising cliffs. Far away on the dark cape I saw the flash of thelighthouse. .. . 

No houses, no people, only a faint cart-track. That track bade mehope. I would follow it in any case. At last, suddenly, I thoughtI saw the cloud of white smoke of a bonfire. It was the far-awaymonastery wall, high and white, with a little lamp in one window. Ibore up with the distance, forms grew distinct in the night; I enteredthe monastery by a five-hundred-yard avenue of cedars. 

I met a novice in a long smock. He took me to the guest-rooms of themonastery, and there, to my joy, I was accommodated with a bed--thefirst for many weeks. I was introduced to a very fat and ancient monkwho carried at his belt a bunch of keys. Though very stupid, and, as Ilearnt afterwards, quite illiterate, he was the spirit of hospitality. He kept the larder, and very gladly brought me milk and bread andcheese, roast beef, wine, and would apparently have brought meanything I asked for--all "for the love of God": no monastery chargesanything for its hospitality. 

After my supper I was glad to stretch my limbs and sleep. I opened mywindow and lay for a while looking at the mysterious dark masses ofthe cedars and listening to the low sobbing of the waves. In themonastery buildings I heard the turnings of heavy keys. I slept. Nextmorning at sunrise I had breakfast in the refectory, and the abbotdeigned to come in and talk about Pitsoonda. His was an ancient andbeautiful monastery, built by the same hand that erected St. Sophia atConstantinople, Justinian the First. It was indeed a replica of thatfamous building, a fine specimen of Byzantine architecture. It hadchanged hands many times, belonging to the Greeks, the Turks, theCherkesses, and finally to the Russians. Here formerly stood thefortified town of Pitius, scarcely a stone of which was now standing, though many were the weapons and household implements that had beenfound by the monks. It was now the scene of the quiet life of twentyor thirty brethren. No one ever visited them or sought them fromwithout. Steamers never called--only occasional feluccas came inbringing Caucasian tribesmen from neighbouring villages, and there wasno carriage-way to any town. 

We talked later of present-day matters, the abbot being at onceomniscient and omni-ignorant, and I finished my breakfast in timeto accompany him to church. I went to morning service in the greathigh-walled cathedral and saw all the brothers pray. Of the people ofthe neighbourhood there were only three; these with the monks formedthe whole congregation--there is no village at Pitsoonda. Imagine agigantic and noble building fit to be the living heart of a greatmetropolis, and inside of it but a few little pictures, brightlypainted, and a diminutive rood-screen, scarcely higher than afive-barred gate. On the ceiling of the great dome was painted alively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, butin countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait ofRobert Louis Stevenson--a Christ with a certain amount of cynicism, one who might have smoked upon occasion. No doubt it was painted by aGreek: a Russian would never have done anything so Western. 

The monks, looking ancient and dwarf-like, for they had never cuttheir beards, were accommodated in little pews along the walls, andthey could stand and rest their shoulders upon the high arms of thepews and doze, but could not sit, for there were no seats. 

The service was beautiful, though I had little feeling of beingin church--one needs many people in such a cathedral. I was moreinterested in the monks, their faces and appearances, and in theatmosphere of the monastery. Most of the monks were peasants, dedicated to the religion of Christ and leading particularly strictlives. It was difficult to understand how they lived. Their faces allbore witness to their religious exercises, and on some were evidencesof spiritual meditation. They were all naturally rather stupid, andhere more stupid than usual, because they were cut off from society, even from the society of their native villages. They did not study, orread, or write; they had no worldly life to occupy them--there was nomeans for it. They could gossip--yes, but I doubt if they even didthat. Assuredly here the Middle Ages slept. 

 * * * * *

Round the monastery, behold, the ruins of a great fort, slowlycrumbling away under the hand of Time. No fleets now sail againstPitius, no pirates land on the barren cape--there is nothing to steal. Even the monastery is without gold. 

VI

I cannot forget this walk of gloom and mystery, and my stay in thisstrange, sleeping monastery of the Middle Ages. But over and againstit stands the bright morning of Gudaout, four days later. 

Gudaout is encompassed by the highest Caucasus--its only refuge is thesea. It is a place most wonderful in the pageantry of dawn. Picturemy life of one evening and morning. I left Gudaout at the dusk, andhaving bought myself a pound of purple grapes, strolled out along thedusty high road eating them. I made my bed on the seashore, and sleptaway the aches and pains of a heavy day's tramping. Next day, in thatsort of reflection of last evening which comes before the morning, Irose, for the coldest of October breezes had come down to me from themountains. The dawn was all gold--a new dawn, I thought. But when Istood on my feet I saw below the gold the lovely bosom of the East, a beautiful, soft bed of creamy rose. It was an elemental sunrise, averitable _first_ morning. 

Distant mountains lay wrapped in dissolving mists, and seemed like themultifarious tents of a great army encamped on a plain--for the smoothsea was like a plain. The chamber of the dawn seemed gigantic, themountains having lifted up the roof of heaven higher than I had everseen it before, the sea having taken it out to a far horizon. 

I stood looking over the shore before sunrise, and far out in the baywere three high-masted feluccas, looking like ships of the SpanishArmada. At the water's edge, and yet silhouetted against the dawn sky, were Mahometans, washing themselves and praying--stark, black figuresin the strange light. 

I welcomed the sun. 

He rose swiftly out of the waters, and shone across the bay, lightingup all the mountains that closed in north and south. He came full ofpromises, and after the coolness and damp of the night I had need ofheat. I lay on a bank and gleaned sunshine. The morning came over thesea steadily, equably, like a good ship making for a sure harbour. 

Then, ten miles from Gudaout, on a mountain, I looked out from theruins of the Tower of Iver, over a vast resplendent sea, and saw belowme the monastery of Novy Afon and all its buildings, looking likechildren's toys. That tower was a stronghold of Christianity inthe third century, and it was strange to think that Crusaders andmediaeval warriors had looked out from the same tower, over the sameglorious sea. Assuredly from the watch-tower of ancient Time allbuildings and man's dwellings are but toys. I thought of that when Irowed across the river Phasis, and drank coffee at Poti on the siteof Colchis. That Black Sea and that river were the same which Jasonsailed with his heroes; and the Golden Fleece, those children's toy, has now, forsooth, become a head-gear in these parts. 

We all pass away, but the sea remains the same; and all our empiresand literatures, arts and towns, crumble and decay, and are provedtoys. Our consolation lies in our unconquerable souls, our gloriousafter-life beyond this world. But the sea has an immortality in thehere and now. I shall never understand its secret. 

A stage is reached when I cease to look at the sea, and allow the seato look into me, when I give it habitation in my being, and am therebyproved, by virtue of my soul, something mightier than it. 

But in vain do we try to take the sea's mystery by storm. In vain dowe search for its meaning with love. It lies beyond our mortal ken, deeper than ever plummet sounded. 

"Is not the sea the very peacock of peacocks?" asks Nietzsche. "Evenbefore the ugliest of all buffaloes it unfoldeth its tail and neverwearieth of its lace fan of silver and gold. " But the sea is not movedby slander. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!" singsByron in praise, but the sea is not encouraged. It hearkeneth not, even unto kings. It is that which changes but is itself unchanged. Itmanifests itself continually in change, and yet it is itself everthe same, ever the same. It reveals itself to man in the majesty andterror of storm, or in the joyousness of peace; when with leaden eyeit glowers upward at the leaden clouds, or when the rain sweeps overit in misery. But the secret of the sea lies beyond all these, hiddenin the depths, profound, sublime. 

II

I

HOSPITALITY

I

I imagine that whilst the prodigal son sat at meat with his father andtheir guests, there may have come to the door a weary tramp beggingfood and lodging. The elder brother would probably refuse hospitality, saying, "You are not even my sinning brother, and shall I harbour_you_?" The father in his wine might cry a welcome--"Let him come infor the sake of my son found this day; he also was a tramp upon theroad. " The prodigal would say to his steady-going, sober elder, "You say he is not your brother; but he is mine, he is my brotherwanderer. " "Oh, come in then, " the elder brother would retort; "butyou must do some work--we can't encourage laziness. You may haveshelter and food, but to-morrow you must work with us in the fieldstill midday. "

This counsel of the elder brother has endured, and is accounted wise. But this type of hospitality is not of that sort that was rewarded, say, in Eager Heart. It is scarcely what the writer to the Hebrewsintended when he said, "Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetfulto entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angelsunawares. " Of those who wander about the world there are many ordinarymen who would be ready to do a morning's work for their board, butthere are also gods in disguise. There are mysterious spirits whocannot reveal the necessities of their fate; souls whom if we couldrecognise in their celestial guise we should worship, falling down attheir feet with the humility of the cry, "I am not worthy that thoushouldest come under my roof. "

There is another important objection to the complexion of the elderbrother's hospitality. Perhaps the tramp would of his own accord havevolunteered to work with them next morning. If so, the tramp wasdeprived of his chance of giving in return. What would have been hisgift has been made his price. He should not have been asked to pay. No one asks a brother to pay for food and shelter. And are we not allbrothers? True hospitality is a sign of the brotherhood of man, andthe open threshold symbolises the open heart. Inhospitality is thesign that man will not recognise the stranger as his brother. 

There are two sorts of hospitality, that which gives all it has andthat which gives what you want--the former growing out of the latter. The one is prodigal and overflowing generosity, almost embarrassing inits lavishness, the other the simple and ordinary kindness that willalways give what it has when there is need; the one the hospitalityof Mary who poured out the precious ointment, the other the simplehospitality and homely kindness of Martha; the one is the glory ofsacrifice and is of one day in a year or of one day in a life, theother is a sacred due and is of every day. The latter should at leastbe universal hospitality. It ought to be possible for man to wanderwhere he will over this little world of ours and never fail to findfree food and shelter and love. I know no greater shame in nationaldevelopment than the commercialisation of the meal and the night'slodging. It has been our great disinheritance. 

But, of course, it would be folly to demand hospitality or to attemptto enforce it. It is like the drunken cobbler who said to his wife, "You don't love me, curse you, but by God you shall if I have to killyou first. " Even if a paternal government made a law that hospitalitywas obligatory and that whoever asked a night's lodging must begiven it, then at one blow the whole idea of hospitality would beannihilated. Hospitality must be something freely given, flowinggenially outward from the heart. When in the _Merchant of Venice_ theDuke says, "Then must the Jew be merciful!" and Shylock asks with trueJewish commercialism, "On what compulsion must I, tell me that?" thenPortia gives the eternal answer--

 The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 

Need it be said mercy and hospitality are in many respects one and thesame, and that when Portia says, "We do pray for mercy and that sameprayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy, " it is likesaying, "We pray for hospitality in heaven and that prayer teaches usto render hospitality here, " like "Forgive us our trespasses as weforgive them that trespass against us. " We shall never be homeless, either here or hereafter, if we love one another. 

The shelter and food given one for the love of God are "sanctifiedcreatures. " Sleeping in a home for the love of God is more refreshingthan sleeping at an inn for a price. One has been blessed and one hasalso blessed in return; for again, hospitality, like mercy, blessesboth those who give and those who take. Throughout a night one hashelped to constitute a home, and the angels of the home have guardedone. One has lain not merely in a house but in a Christian home, notonly in a home but in the temple of the heart. 

It is sweet in a far-away land to be treated like a son or a brother, to be taken for granted, to be embraced by strange men and blessed bystrange women. Sweet also is it for the far-away man to recognisea new son or a new brother in the wanderer whom he has received. Iremember one night at the remote village of Seraphimo in ArchangelGovernment, how a peasant put both hands on my shoulders and, lookinginto my eyes, exclaimed, "How like he is to us!"

II

Tramping across the Crimean moors I lost my way in the mist near themonastery of St. George, and was conducted by a peasant to the Greekvillage of Kalon, well known to old campaigners--it is betweenSebastopol and Balaklava. The village remains the same to-day as itwas in the days of the Crimean War, and the same families as livedthere then, or their descendants, live there now. I visited the_starosta_, and he indicated a home where I might sleep the night. Iwas taken in by an aged Greek woman and entertained among her family. They brought me bread and wine, and spread out the best couch for me. The sons told me of hunting exploits with the bear and the wild boar;they told me how at Christmas time the wild turkeys fly overhead insuch numbers that it is the easiest thing in the world to shoot one'sChristmas dinner--and I thought that very convenient. When the sonswere silent, or talking among themselves, the old dame told me abouther youth: how she was only seventeen years old at the time of thewar; how the English were the most handsome of all the soldiers, howthe Turks were the most lazy and the most brutal, how the French andthe Italians simpered; how the English soldiers were loved by theGreek girls, how they were also more generous than the other troopsand gave freely clothes and tea and sugar and whatever was needed inthe cottages and asked no money for it whatever; how in these days thelittle children played with the cannon-balls, rolling them over themoors and up the village street--all manner of gossip the good oldlady told me, beguiling the hours and my ears till it was bedtime. Next day I offered to pay at least for my food, but the old lady, though poor, waved her hand and said, "Oh no, it is for the love ofGod!" How often have I had that said to me day after day in Russia, especially in the North!

Another day in Imeritia, when I passed at evening through a littleCaucasian village and was beginning to wonder where I should havemy supper and find a night's lodging, a Georgian suddenly hailed meunexpectedly. He was sitting, not in his own house, but at a tablein an inn. There were of course no windows to the inn, and allthe company assembled could easily converse with the horsemen andpedestrians in the street below. He called out to me and I went up tohim. A place was made for me at the table, and he ordered a chickenand a bottle of wine. I was just a little doubtful, for I had neverseen the man before and his anticipation of my needs was surprising, but I accepted his invitation, drank his health, and ate my meal. Helooked at me very pleasantly, and he was more sensible than a Russian, the sort of person who is marvellously interested in you, but who isso gentle that he will ask no questions lest you find some pain inanswering him. But I told him about myself. After the meal he took mealong to his house and gave me a spare bed. All was very disorderlyand he apologised, saying, "It is untidy, but I am a bachelor. What isa bachelor to do? If I were married all would be different. " I spent awhole day with him, and in that short space he conceived for me as itseemed an eternal friendship. 

"You are very good, " I said at parting. "You have been veryhospitable. I don't know how to thank you. .. . " He stopped my words. "No, no, " he said, "it is only natural; it is no doubt what any onewould do for me in your country were I a stranger there. "

"Would they?" I thought. 

By the way, a curious example of inhospitality showed itself in thisvillage where I met the Georgian. We were sitting round a pitcher ofsweet rose-coloured wine, and one of us signalled to a rather moroseAkhbasian prince who was passing, but he took no notice. "He will notdrink wine with us, " said my friend. "His wife is so beautiful. "

"What _do_ you mean?" I asked. 

"His wife is very beautiful and he is as jealous of her as she isbeautiful. He is like a dog who growls when he has suddenly gotsomething very good in his mouth: he fears any familiarity on the partof other dogs. "

As a tramp I have often felt how little I had to give materially forall the kindness I have received. But even such as myself have theiropportunities of reciprocity, though they are of a humble kind. I callto mind a cold, wet day near Batoum, how I had a big bonfire by astream under a bridge and I warmed myself, cooked food, and tookshelter from the rain. A Caucasian man and woman, both tramps, cameand sat by my fire a long while. The man took from his breast somegreen tobacco leaves, dried them by the fire, and put them in his pipeand smoked them. They spoke a language quite unintelligible to meand knew not a word of Russian. But they were nevertheless extremelydemonstrative and told me all manner of things by signs and gestures. Very poor, even starving, and I gave them some bread and beef and somehot rice pudding from my pot. In return the man gave me five and ahalf walnuts! We seemed like children playing at being tramps, but Ifelt a very lively affection for these strange wanderers who had comeso trustingly to my little home under the bridge. 

One of the beautiful things about hospitality is that though we do notpay the giver of it directly, we do really pay him in the long run. A is hospitable to B, B to C, C to D, and so on, and at last Z ishospitable to A. It is largely a matter of "Forgive us our trespassesas we forgive them that trespass against us. " It is significant thatthe Russian's parting word equivalent to our "God be with you" is"Forgive!"

III

When St. Peter said to the beggar, "Silver and gold have I none, butsuch as I have give I thee, " it is not to be thought that he hadn't afew coppers to spare. He meant, "Silver and gold are not my gifts; Ihave something other and more precious. " Thus the apostle indicatedthe deeper significance of charity. 

There is hospitality of the mind as well as of the hand, though bothspring from the heart. Hospitality of the hand is having a home withopen doors, but that of the mind is having open the temple of thesoul. 

I once called upon a hermit and we talked of the significance ofhospitality. At last he said to me: "You praise hospitality well, mybrother, but there is another and a greater hospitality than you haveyet mentioned. It is the will to take the wanderer not only into thehouse to feed but into the heart to comfort and love, the ability tolisten when others are singing, to see when others are showing, tounderstand when others are suffering. It is what the writer to theCorinthians meant by charity. 

"Thus--'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and havenot charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal, 'is like saying, 'Though I have all possible eloquence and yet do notunderstand mankind, do not take him to my heart, I am as soundingbrass; unless my eloquence is music played upon the common chord I ambut a tinkling cymbal. '

"'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand allmysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that Icould remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing, ' islike saying, 'Though I see into the future but misunderstand itssignificance; though I understand all mysteries, but not the mysteryof the human heart; though I am able to remove obstacles by faith, Iam simply like Napoleon, finishing up at St. Helena, I am nothing. '

"'And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I givemy body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing, 'is like saying, 'Organised philanthropy is not charity, neither is thewill to be a martyr, unless these things spring from the will to feelhow our brothers suffer. '

"'Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charityvaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itselfunseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh noevil;

"'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, ' for thetruth refutes all uncharitable judgment, the truth shows us all asbrothers, shows us all needing the love which one man can give toanother. 

"'Charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. '"

I understood the hermit though it seemed to me there was much that heleft out. Had he been a tramp instead of a hermit he would probablyhave thought as I do. The world that he talked of was obviously oneentirely of men and women, and he left out of account all that worldwhich we call Nature. 

It is well to receive men and shelter them and feed them, and well tounderstand their hearts, but when men are not near there is anotherbeautiful world knocking at our doors and asking hospitality inour souls; it is the world of Nature. Oh ye young of all ages, behospitable unto Nature, open your doors to her, take her to yourhearts! She will rebuild your soul into a statelier mansion, makingfor herself a fitting habitation, she will make you all beautifulwithin. Then, when you extend the hospitality of your hearts, your_temples_, to man, they will be spacious temples and rich hearts. Nature comes first, for she heals hearts' wounds; if you have notreceived her communion first you will not be so fit to receive man. The consumptive-bodied already go to the country, and we are nearlyall of us, in this era of towns, consumptive-souled. We need wholehearts just as we need whole lungs. But what am I saying? I am biddingyou bargain with Nature for a price, and that is wrong. You must loveher, not for anything she can give you. What is more, you can neverknow what she will give you: she may even take away. When you see heryou will love her as a bride. Be receptive to her beauty, be alwaysEager Heart. When any man receives her into himself there is born inhis soul's house the baby Christ, the most wonderful and transfiguringspirit that man has yet known upon a strange world. 

II

THE STORY OF THE RICH MAN AND THE POOR MAN

On my way to Jerusalem I tramped through a rich residential regionwhere wealthy Armenians, Turks, and Russians dwelt luxuriously inbeautiful villas looking over the sea. I had been sleeping out, for the road was high and dry and healthy, but at last, entering amalarial region, I began to seek shelter more from man than fromNature. 

One cold and cloudy night I came into the village of Ugba and soughthospitality. There were few houses and fewer lights, and some feelingof awkwardness, or perhaps simply a stray fancy, prompted me to do anunusual thing--to beg hospitality at one of the luxurious villas. Ihad nearly always gone to the poor man's cottage rather than to therich man's mansion, but this night, the opportunity offering, Iappealed to the rich. 

I came to the house of a rich man, and as I saw him standing in thelight of a front window I called out to him from a distance. In thedusk he could not make out who I was, but judging by my voice he tookme for an educated man, one of his own class. 

"Can you put me up for the night?" I asked. 

"Yes, " he replied cheerfully. "Come round by the side of the house, otherwise the dogs may get in your way. "

But when the rich man saw me on his threshold a cloud passed over hiseyes and the welcome faded from his face. For I was dressed simplyas a tramp and had feet so tired that I had not troubled to take thesigns of travel from my garments. I had a great sack on my back, andin my hand a long staff. 

The head of the house, a portly old gentleman with a long beard, interrogated me; his son, a limp smiling officer in white duck, peeredover his shoulder; two or three others of the establishment looked onfrom various distances. 

"What do you want?" asked the old gentleman curtly, as if he had notheard already. 

"A lodging for the night, " I said unhappily. 

"You won't find lodging here, " said the greybeard in a falsestentorian voice. And the little officer in white giggled. 

"You've made a mistake and come to the wrong house. We have no room. "

"A barn or outhouse would serve me nicely, " I put in. 

The old man waved his hand. 

"No, no. You are going southward? You have strayed somewhat out ofyour path coming up here. There is a short cut to the main road. Thereyou'll find a tavern. "

It was in my mind to say, "I am an Englishman, a traveller and writer, and I am on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. You misdoubt my appearance, andare afraid of sheltering an unknown wanderer, but I am one whom youwould find it interesting and perhaps even profitable to harbour. " Butmy heart and lips were chilled. 

I had taken off my pack, but put it on again humbly and, somewhatabashed, prepared to leave. The family stood by staring. It was a veryunusual thing for a poor tramp to come and ask hospitality. Tramps asa rule knew better than to come to their doors. Indeed, no tramp hadever come there before. It rather touched them that I should havebelieved they would shelter me. Their refusal troubled them somewhat. 

"There's always plenty of room in the tavern, " said the rich man tohis wife. "And they'll be glad to have a customer. "

As I turned to go, some one brought a light, and a gleam fell on myface. The company expected to see the cringing, long-suffering faceof a peasant in the presence of his master, but the light showedsomething different. .. . 

"He is perhaps one of our own class . .. Or . .. God knows what . .. "they thought, one and all. "It is hateful to have refused him. But no, if he is one of us, why does he come clothed like a common man? He hasonly himself to blame. "

The old man, feeling somewhat ashamed, offered to show me the way. Hecame out and pointed out the short cut to the tavern. 

"It is quite clear. I shall find the way, " I said. "Thank you. "

The old man halted as if he wished to say something more. 

"What now?" I asked myself. I said good-bye, and as I moved away heasked:

"You are going far, belike!"

"To Jerusalem, " I answered laconically. In Russia there is only onething to say when a man tells you he is going to Jerusalem. It is, "Pray for me there!" But somehow that request stuck in the old man'sthroat. 

When I got outside the park gates I pulled down my pack and tookout of it the only thing that had stood between me and a night'slodging--a grey tweed sportsman's jacket--and I put it on, and with ita collar and tie, and I walked along the road in real sadness. For Ifelt wounded. 

I could forgive the man for doing so unto me, but it was hard toforgive him for doing so unto himself, unto us all. He had made lifeugly for a moment, and made the world less beautiful. To-morrow thesun and the earth would be less glorious because of him. 

But I had only walked a few steps down the road from the rich man'shouse when I came to a poor peasant's hut where there burned onelittle light at a little square window. 

And I thought, "Please God, I will not go to the tavern, which ispossibly kept by a Turk and is very dirty. I will try for a night'slodging here. "

I knocked at the door with my staff. 

There was a stirring inside. 

"Who is there?"

"One who wants a lodging for the night. It is late to disturb you, butI fear there will be rain. "

A peasant woman came to the door and unbarred it, and let me in. 

"Ah, little father, " she said, "you come late, and we have littlespace, as you see, only one room and a big family, but come in if youwill. "

She turned up the little kerosene lamp and looked at me. 

"Ai, ai, " she said, "a _barin_. " She looked at my coat and collar. "Itwill be but poor fare here. "

"Not a _barin_" I urged, "but a poor wanderer coming from far andgoing farther still. I generally sleep under the open sky with God asmy host and the world as my home, but to-night promises storm, and Ifear to take cold in the rain. "

The peasant girl, for she was no more, busied herself with thesamovar. "You must have something hot to drink, and some milk and eggsperhaps. My husband is not yet home from market, but he will comebelike very soon, and will be very glad to find a stranger. He willrejoice. He always rejoices to give hospitality to strangers upon theroad. "

When she had brought me a meal she fetched fresh hay from a barn andspread a quilt over it and made a bed for me, and would have given meher own pillow but that I pointed out that my pack itself made a verygood resting-place for my head. 

Then her husband came home, a strong kindly man, full of life andhappiness, and he did rejoice as his little wife had promised. He wassorry he had not wine with which to entertain me. Such people drinkwine not more than twice in a year. 

And with these humble, gentle folk I forgot the rich man's coldness, and healed my heart's wounds. Life was made beautiful again. To-morrowthe sun would be as bright as ever. 

I slept in the comfortable warm bed on the floor of the poor peasant'shut, and the storm rolled overhead, the winds moaned and the rainfell. 

"You are going to Jerusalem, " said the good man and woman nextmorning, "pray for us there. It is hard for us to leave our little hutand farm, or we would go to the Holy Land ourselves. We should liketo go to the place where the Christ was born in Bethlehem and to theplace where He died. "

"I shall pray, " I said; and I thought in my heart, "They are there inJerusalem all the time, even though they remain here. For they showhospitality to strangers. "

 * * * * *

But as I trudged along my way there seemed to be a pathos too deep fortears underlying my experiences at the hands of the rich man and ofthe poor man. 

That it should occur so in real life, and not merely in a moral tale!

The position of the rich man is so defensible. Of course it wouldhave been ridiculous of him to have sheltered me. Who was I? I had nointroduction. What was I? I might have robbed him in the night . .. Ormurdered. I was ill-dressed and poor, therefore no doubt covetous ofhis fine clothes and wealth. They would only have themselves to blameif they sheltered me and I did them harm. Besides, was there not thetavern close by? All reason pointed to the tavern. 

But something troubled them, something in my face and demeanour!

Alas for such people! They forget that Christ comes into this worldnot clothed in purple. They forget that Christ is always walking onthe road, and that he shows himself as one needing help. And alwaysonce in a man's life the pilgrim Christ comes knocking at his door, with the pack of man's sorrows on his back and in his hand the staffwhich may be a cross. 

 * * * * *

I met the young officer in white next morning. He looked at me with acertain amount of surprise. I hailed him. 

"Did you sleep well at the tavern?" he asked. 

"I found shelter at a peasant's house, " I answered. 

"Ah! That's well. I didn't think of that. You said you were going toJerusalem. Why is that? Evidently you are not Russian. "

I told him somewhat of my plans. He seemed interested and somewhatvexed. "I said we ought to have taken you in, " he said apologetically. "But you came so late--'like a thief in the night, ' as the Scripturesaith. "

I sat down on a stone and laughed and laughed. He stared at me inperplexity. 

"'Like a thief in the night, '" I cried out. "Oh, how came you to hiton that expression? Go on, please--'and I knew you not. ' Who is it whocometh as a thief in the night?"

The officer smiled faintly. He was dull of understanding, butevidently I had made a joke, or perhaps I was a little crazed. 

He turned on his heel. "Sorry we turned you away, " he repeated, "butthere are so many scoundrels about. If you're passing our way again besure and call in. Come whilst it's light, however. "

III

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT

Dzhugba is an aggregation of cottages and villas round about theestuary of a little river flowing down from the Caucasus to the BlackSea. On the north a long cliff road leads to Novorossisk a hundredmiles, and southward the same road goes on to Tuapse, some fifty milesfrom Maikop and the English oil-fields. 

I arrived at the little town too late to be sure of finding lodging. The coffee-house was a wild den of Turks, and I would not enter it;most private people were in bed. I walked along the dark main streetand wondered in what unusual and unexpected manner I should spend thenight. When one has no purpose, there is always some real _providence_waiting for the tramp. 

The quest of a night's lodging is nearly always the origin ofmysterious meetings. It nearly always means the meeting of utterstrangers, and the recognition of the fact that, no matter howexteriorly men are unlike one another, they are all truly brothers, and have hearts that beat in unison. Thus did it happen that I met mystrange host of Dzhugba. 

A hatless but very hairy Russian met me at a turning of the road, andeyeing me with lacklustre eyes asked me gruffly as a rude shopmanmight, "What do you want?"

"A lodging for the night. "

The peasant reflected, as if mentally considering the resources of thelittle town. At last after a puzzling silence he put one fat hand onmy shoulder, and staring into my face, pronounced his verdict--

"The houses are all shut up and the people gone to bed. There is noplace; even the coffee-house is full. But never mind, you can spendthe night in a shed over here. I shall find you a place. No, don'tthank me; it comes from the heart, from the soul. "

He led me along to a lumber-room by the side of the plank pier. Itcontained two dozen barrels of "Portlandsky" cement. The floor was allgrey-white and I looked around somewhat dubiously, seeing that cementis rather dirty stuff to sleep upon. But, nothing abashed, my newfriend waved his hand as if showing me into a regal apartment. 

"Be at your ease!" said he. "Take whatever place you like, makeyourself comfortable. No, no thanks; it is all from God, it is whatGod gives to the stranger. "

He thereupon ran out on to the sand, for the shed was on the seashore, and he beckoned me to follow. To my astonishment, we found outthere an old rickety bedstead with a much rent and rusted springmattress--apparently left for me providentially. It was so old anduseless that it could not be considered property, even in Russia. Itbelonged to no one. Its nights were over. I gave it one night more. 

The peasant was in high glee. 

"Look what I've found for you, " said he. "Who could have expected thatto be waiting outside for you? Several days I have looked at thatbedstead and thought, 'What the devil is that skeleton? Whence?Whither?' Now I understand it well. It is a bed, the bed of theEnglishman on the long journey. .. . "

The mattress was fixed to an ancient bed frame--one could not call itbedstead--with twisted legs that gave under weight and threatened tobreak down. We brought the "contrapshun" in. 

"Splendid!" said my host. 

"Impossible, " I thought, trying to press down the prickly wire wherethe mattress was torn. 

"No doubt you are hungry, " my friend resumed. I assured him I was notin the least hungry, but despite my protestations he ran off to bringme something to eat. I felt sorry; for I thought he might be bringingme a substantial supper, and I had already made a good meal about anhour before. What was more, he lived at some distance, and I did notcare to trouble the good man, or for him to waken up his wife who bythat hour was probably sleeping. 

However, he was gone, and there was nothing to be done. I laid somehay on the creaking sorrow of a bed, and endeavoured to bend to safetythe wilderness of torn and rusty wire. I spread my blanket over thewhole and gingerly committed my body to the comfortable-seeming couch. Imagine how the bed became an unsteady hammock of wire and how thecontrivance creaked at each vibration of my body. I lay peacefully, however, looked at the array of cement barrels confronting me, andwaited for my host. I expected a plate of chicken and a bottle ofwine, and was gradually feeling myself converted to the idea that Iwouldn't mind a nice tasty supper even though I had made my eveningmeal. 

What was my astonishment when the good man returned bearing asquare-foot slice of black bread on which reposed a single yellowcarrot! I looked curiously at the carrot, but my host said, "_Nitchevo, nitchevo, vinograd_"--"Don't worry, don't worry, a grape, that's all. "

He had also brought a kerosene lamp, which, however, lacked a glass. He stood it on one of the grey barrels and turned it monstrously high, just to show his largeness of heart, I suppose. I got up and turnedit down because it was smoking, and he waved his hand once moredeprecatingly, and turning the wick up and down several times, signified that I was to do with it exactly as I pleased. He left itsmoking again, however. 

I put the thought of a good supper out of my mind and looked at theblack bread with some pathos, as who would not after conjuring beforethe eyes a plate of chicken and a bottle of wine? However, it wasindeed _nitchevo_, to use the Russian phrase, a mere nothing. Iaverred I was not hungry and put the bread in my pack, of which I hadmade a pillow, and simulating comfort, said I thanked him and wouldnow go to sleep. My host understood me, but was not less originalin his parting greeting than in the rest. He shook hands with meeffusively, and pointed to the roof. 

"One God, " he said. "And two men underneath. Two men, one soul. "

He looked at me benevolently and pointed to his heart. 

"Two men, one soul, " he repeated, and crossed himself. "Youunderstand?"

"I understand. "

Then he added finally, "Turn the lamp as high as you like, " and suitedthe action to the word by turning it so high that one saw a densecloud of smoke beyond the lurid flame. 

"Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

My queer guardian angel disappeared. I fastened the door so that itshould not swing in the wind, and then climbed back into my wirehammock, stretched out my limbs, laid my cheek on my pack, and slept. 

Nothing disturbed me, though I woke in the night, and looking round, missed the Ikon lamp which would have been burning had I been ina home. It was a saint's day. The absence of the Ikon told me thedifference between sleeping in a house and sleeping in a home. Perhaps it was because of this difference that my host blessed me soearnestly. 

Next morning I sought my host in vain. He had apparently left the townbefore dawn with a waggon of produce that had to be carted to Tuapse. At breakfast in the Turkish coffee-house I looked with some amusementat the bread and carrot, discarded the latter, but munched the formerto the accompaniment of a plate of chicken and a bottle of wine. Myimagining, therefore, of the previous night was not altogether vain. All that was needed was that my comical host should look in. As itwas, in his absence I drank his health with a Georgian. 

IV

SOCRATES OF ZUGDIDA

I was travelling without a map, never knowing what I was coming tonext, what long Caucasian settlement or rushing unbridged river, and Icame quite unexpectedly to a town. I had not the remotest idea that atown was near, and when I learned the name of the town I realised thatI had never heard of it before--Zugdida. 

This is no fairy story. Zugdida veritably exists, and may be foundmarked on large maps. I came into it on a Sunday evening, and found itone of the largest and most lively of all the Caucasian towns I hadyet visited; the shops and the taverns all open, the wide streetscrowded with gaily dressed horsemen, the footways thronged withpeasants walking out in Sunday best. A remote town withal, not on therailways, and unvisited as yet by any motor-car--unvisited, becausethe rivers in these parts are all bridgeless. 

I was looking for a place where I might spend the night--towns areinhospitable places, and one is timorous of sleeping in a tavern fullof armed drunkards--when I was hailed by a queer old man, who noticedthat I was a stranger. He kept one of the two hundred wine-cellars ofthe town, and was able to give me a good supper and a glass ofwine with it. He was an aged Mingrelian, bald on his crown, butlank-haired, dreamy-eyed, stooping; he had a Robinson Crusoe type ofcountenance. I had come to one of the oldest inhabitants of Zugdida, an extraordinary character. 

I asked him how the town had grown in his memory. 

"When I came here from the hills forty years ago, " said he, "longbefore the Russo-Turkish War, there were three houses here--threeonly, two were wine-cellars. Now Zugdida is second only to Kutais. Iremember how two more wine-cellars were built, and a small generalshop, then a bread shop, then two more wine--cellars, two littlegrocer's shops, some farm-houses. We became a fair-sized village, andwondered how we had grown. The Russians came and built stone housesand a military barracks, a prison, a police-station, and a big church;then came the Hotel of Russia, the Universal Stores. We built thebroad, flag-stoned market, and named a Fair day; saddlery and swordshops opened, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, coppersmiths, jewel workers, tailors; Singer's sewing machines came, two more hotels, and we grewand grew. We have now over two hundred taverns. We have offered theGovernment to pay for all the necessary land, and defray all minorexpenses, if they will connect us with Poti by railway, and if it werenot that so many people want bribes we should be part of Europe. As itis, we're just a bit of the old Caucasus. "

He pointed to a group of drunkards, all armed from head to foot, but now clinging to one another and raising their voices in Asiaticchanting. 

After supper--a stew of mutton and maize, with a bottle of very sweetrose-coloured wine--the old man took me aside and made me a longharangue on life and death and the hereafter. Better sermon on aSunday evening I never heard in church. He told me the whole course ofthe good man's life and compared it with that of the bad man, weighedthe two, and found the latter wanting on all counts, adding, however, that it was impossible to be good. 

"How did you come to think so seriously of life?" I inquired. 

"In this way, " he replied. "Once I was very 'flee-by-the-sky'--Ididn't care a rap, sinned much, and feared neither God nor thedevil--or, if anything, I feared the devil a little; for God I neverhad the least respect. But one day I picked up a book written by oneAndrew, and I read some facts that astonished me. He said that ineight thousand years after the creation of the world the sun would gored and the moon grey, the sun would grow old and cease to warm theworld--just as you and I must inevitably grow old. In that day wouldbe born together, one in the East and one in the West, Christ and theAnti-Christ, and they would fight for the dominion of the world. Thisstory caused me to pause and think. Hitherto I had taken all forgranted. 

"It had never occurred to me that the sun might stop shining, that thestars might go out. I had scarcely thought that I myself might stop, might die. 

"'What happens to me when I die?' I asked people. 'God will judgeyou, ' they said. 'If good, you go to heaven; if evil, to hell. ' Thatdid not satisfy me. How did people know? No one had ever come back totell us how things were done after death. 

"I had never thought at all before, but now I began to think so hardthat I could not go about the ordinary things of life, I was sowrapped up in the mystery of my own ignorance. 

"People said I was under the evil eye. But that again was nonsense. 'Whence comes man?' I asked. 'Where does he go? Where was I before Iwas born?' I was part of my ancestors. Very well. 'But where shall Igo when I die? What shall I be?'

"I nearly learned to disbelieve in religion. You must know I began togo to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals. I listenedintently to all the services and the sermons, and I read all that Icould find to read, and I asked questions of priests and of educatedpeople--all with the idea of solving this mystery of life. I tried tobe good at the bidding of the Church, but I gave that up. I learnedthat it was impossible to avoid sin. 

"You drink wine--this is a sin; give short weight--that is a sin;look on your neighbour's wife--that is a sin; everything you dois sin--even if you do nothing, that is sin; there is no road ofsinlessness. 

"I went on living as I felt inclined, without care as to whether itwere sin or no. But still I asked myself about man's life. 

"Some one said to me, 'You will never understand, because you think ofyourself as a separate individual, and not as just a little part ofthe human race. You live on in all the people who come after you, justas before you were born you lived in those who were before you. '

"That was something new, but I understood him, and I asked him a newquestion: 'If what you say is true--and very likely it is--what, then, is the past of the whole human race, and what its future? What doesthe life of the human race mean?'

"That he could not answer. Can you answer it? No. No one can answerit. "

 * * * * *

"You are like Socrates, " I said. 

"Who was Socrates?"

"He was the man whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive. Allmen knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he aloneknew that he knew nought. "

A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host. He was at least quite human. 

Before going to bed we drank one another's healths. 

V

"HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?"

This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see. 

I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wonderingwhere I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice criedout to me from the darkness of the steppe. I stopped and looked andlistened. In a minute a little boy in a red shirt and a grey sheepskinhat came careering towards me, and called out: "Do you want a placeto sleep? My mother's coffee-house is the best you'll find. Thecoffee-house down the hill is nothing to it. There it is, that darkhouse you passed. I am out gathering wood for the fire, but I shallcome in a minute. "

Sharp boy! He was only eight years old. How did he guess my need sowell?

I retraced my footsteps very happily, and came to the dark inn I hadmissed. It stood fifty yards back from the road, and had no lightexcept what glimmered from the embers of a wood fire. At the door wasa parrot that cried out, "Choozhoï, choozhoï, choozhoï preeshhòl"--"Astranger, a stranger, a stranger has arrived. "

The mother, a pugnacious gossip with arms akimbo, looked at me withperturbed pleasure. "Are you a beggar or a customer?" she asked. "Because if you're a beggar, " etc. I cut her short as soon as I could. I assured her I should be much pleased to be a customer. 

I ordered tea. The boy came in and claimed me as his find, but wassnubbed. My hostess proceeded to ask me every question known toher. To my replies, which were often not a little surprising, sheinvariably replied with one of these exclamations, "Say it again, ifyou please. " "Indeed!" "With what pleasure!"

That I was a tramp and earned my living by writing about my adventurespleased her immensely. I earned my living by having holidays, andgained money where other travellers never did anything but spend. 

"With what pleasure" did she hear that literary men were paid so manyroubles a thousand words for their writings. One could easily write animmense quantity, she thought. 

The little boy looked at me with bright eyes, and listened. Presently, when his mother was dilating on the inferiority of painting as aprofession, he broke in. 

The mother was saying, "Not only does the painter catch cold standingstill so long in marshy places, but when he has finished his pictureshe has to hawk them in the fairs, and even then he may not be able tosell them. "

"What fairs?" asked the boy. 

"The fairs of Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, and the great towns. Some sellfor fifty roubles, some for five hundred, some for five thousand andmore. A little picture would go for five roubles perhaps. "

"What size pictures would one buy for fifty roubles?" asked the boy. 

"Oh, about the same size as from the floor to the ceiling. "

"What size would one be that cost five thousand roubles?"

"Oh, an immense picture; one could build a country house out of it. "

The boy reflected. 

"And five hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remainedprofitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The firenow blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. Thelittle voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted, "Silence! Don't make yourself a nuisance. "

"But how big would it be?" whined the boy. "Tell me. "

"Oh, the same, but bigger, stupid!"

Thereupon my little friend was very happy, and he apparently ascribedhis happiness to me. 

A few minutes later he abruptly asked permission to take me up amountain to show me a castle next morning, and his mother agreed, pointing out how extremely profitable it would be for me. The littleboy rejoiced; he had apparently wanted to go up to that castle for along while. How excited and happy he was!

His mother paid little attention to her child, however, and herinterest lay in the bubbling cauldron where the soup was cooking. "Youhave a very clever boy, " I said, but she did not agree with me. Hispranks and high spirits were to her evidence of stupidity. I must sayI felt we were the stupid party, and the boy was a little wonder. Wewent on gossiping, and presently he proved us stupid. 

He started up with one finger to his ear and then darted out, leavingthe door open and letting the steppe air pour in. 

The mother listened, and then said discontentedly after a pause, "Thatchild is not usual. "

The boy came back with fifteen shaggy customers, however; fifteenred-faced waggoners, half-frozen in their sheepskins, and allclamoured for food and drink. 

The boy, all excitement, danced up to me and said, "Have you a lighthand? You must have a light hand!" I didn't know what he meant, but hewas off before I had time to ask. 

He began serving tea and cutting bread and asking questions. Didany one want soup? Nobody wanted soup at first, but at the boy'ssolicitations nine of them agreed to have portions at twopence aplateful. The mother persuaded others to have pickled herrings, cheese, wine. 

The inn was of two rooms: one a bedroom and retiring-room without adoor. The Ikon of this room served the economical hostess for bothrooms. 

The waggoners were all surly till they had fed. "Show me where we canbow to God, " said one of them very gruffly, not seeing the Ikon. Thelittle boy led him and all his mates into the little bedroom, and theyall bowed their hairy faces and crossed themselves before the Ikon ofSt. Nicholas. 

Then they returned and consumed the soup and the herrings and breadand cheese and wine and tea. I looked on. My hostess was turning apretty penny. I was looking on at a very pleasant and surprisinginterlude. 

Every now and then one of the mouzhiks would stump out to see how thehorses were, for they had a long train of waggons carrying buildingmaterials to the Tsar's estate of Livadia. At length all had supped, and they came up to the counter one by one and thanked the hostessheartily, paying her the while. 

Only one of the men was dissatisfied--the last one to come up. 

"Your soup is dear, " said he. 

"Dear! What do you mean?" said the woman. "How much would you pay forsuch soup in Yalta, and with beef at fivepence a pound, too?"

"In Yalta they give one soup. "

"And here!"

"Here . .. As God wills . .. Something. .. . " The mouzhik slammed thedoor. 

"There's a man, " said my hostess, but she wasn't enraged. Had shenot just sold the family's soup for eighteenpence, and made tenpenceprofit on it, and wouldn't her husband be pleasantly surprised when hesaw there were three shillings more on the counter than usual? It wasnot often that such custom had come to her. 

The boy explained the reason to her in a whisper: "He has a lighthand. "

"Very like, " said she, looking at me with new interest. 

"What do you mean?" I asked the boy. 

"Why, don't you know?" said he wonderingly. "Wherever you go you bringgood fortune. After I met you on the road I immediately began tofind wood much more plentifully. When I came in I learned how to buypictures. Then mother said she would let me go with you to see thecastle. Then, not only are you a good customer staying the night, butafter you came all this crowd of customers. Generally we have nobodyat all. .. . "

"And I met this wonderful boy, " thought I. "I should like to carry himaway. He is like something in myself. He also had the light hand, but what a testimony he gave the tramp! Wherever he goes he bringshappiness. "

As once I wrote before, "tramps often bring blessings to men: theyhave given up the causes of quarrels. Sometimes they are a littledivine. God's grace comes down upon them. "

VI

ST. SPIRIDON OF TREMIFOND

The charge for driving on Caucasian roads is a penny per horse permile, so if you ride ten miles and have two horses you pay the driverone shilling and eightpence. But if, as generally happens, thedriver's sense of cash has deprived him of a sense of humour, aconversation of this kind commonly arises. 

"One and eightpence. What's this?"

"Ten miles, and two horses at a penny per horse per mile; isn't thatcorrect?"

"To the devil with your one and eightpence. Give it to the horses;a penny a mile for a horse, and how about the man, the cart, theharness? I gave you hay to sit on. See what fine weather it hasbeen! What beautiful scenery! Yonder is the church . .. The wineshop, the. .. . "

"Hold hard, my good man. The Universe, our salvation by Christ, whydon't you charge for these as well! Here's sixpence to buy yourself adrink. "

The driver takes the sixpence and looks at it, makes a calculation, and then blurts out:

"What! Sixpence for a man and tenpence for a horse; ai, ai, what a_barin_ I have found. Sixpence for a man and tenpence for a horse. Badnews, bad news! Cursed be the day. .. . "

Here you give him another sixpence, and get out of earshot quickly. 

A penny a mile a horse. It is good pay in the Caucasus, and I for mypart charge myself only a halfpenny a mile. If I walk twenty-fivemiles, then I allow myself a shilling wages, and, of course, some ofthat I save for the occasion when I come into a town with a greatdesire for good things. Then a spending of savings and a feast!

"Good machines use little fuel, " said an emaciated tramp to me oneday. But I have no ambition to be accounted a good machine on thoseterms. I eat and drink anything that comes in my way, and am readyat any moment to feast or to fast. I seldom pass a crab-apple treewithout tasting its fruit, or allow myself to pass a mountain streamwithout drinking. 

Along this Black Sea road in the autumn it would be impossible tostarve, so lavish is Nature of her gifts. Here are many wild fruits, plums, pears, blackberries, walnuts, grapes, ripening in suchsuperfluity that none value them. The peasant women pick what theyneed; the surplus is allowed to fall and rot into the soil. 

I made my way to Ghilendzhik through miles of wild fruit-trees rangedin regular order. It is said that once upon a time when this territorybelonged to Turkey, or even before then, the land was laid out inorchards and vineyards, and there was not a square foot uncultivated. 

I ate of wild pears and kisil plums. The pears were more theconcentrated idea of pears than that we take from gardens; the kisilplums, with which the bushes were flaming, are a cloudy, crimson fruitwith blood-like juice, very tart, and consequently better cooked thanraw. My dictionary tells me that the kisil is the burning bush of theOld Testament, but surely many shrubs claim that distinction. 

It was a glorious walk over the waste from Kabardinka to Ghilendzhik, with all manner of beauty and interest along the way. I left the roadand cut across country, following the telegraph poles. In front of mefat blue lizards scuttled away, looking like little lilac-coloured_dachshunds_; silent brown snakes shot out of reach at the sight of myshadow; and every now and then, poking and grubbing like a hedgehog, behold a large tortoise out for prey like his brother reptiles. Thisdomiciled the tortoise for me; otherwise I had only associated himwith suburban gardens and the "Zoo. " Now as he hissed at me angrily Iknew him to be a lizard with a shell on his back. I picked up severalof them and examined their faces--they didn't like that at all. Theyhave a peculiar clerical appearance, something of the sternness andfixity of purpose which seems to express itself in the jaws and eyesof some learned divines. 

With what eagerness the tortoises scrambled away when I disturbedthem. They run almost speedily in their natural state. I was amused atthe strength of their claws, and the rate at which they tore a passageinto a thicket and disappeared. 

Half-way to Ghilendzhik there is a stone quarry, and there one may seethousands of what are called in England "Cape gooseberries, " brightberries of the size and colour of big ripe strawberries. They peepedout shyly everywhere among the tall grasses and the ground-scrub. Above them were stretches of saffron-coloured hollyhocks, a floodof colour, and with these as sisters, evening primroses, a greatabundance. Lilac and crimson grasshoppers rushed over them, jumpinginto the air and into vision, a puff of bright colour--then subsidinginto the greyness of the dust as they alighted and the sombrewing-cases closed over their little glory. On the ground when waitingto spring, these grasshoppers looked as if made of wood: they lookedlike displaced chessmen of ancient workmanship. 

What a rush of insect life there was in the air, new-born fritillarybutterflies like little flames, dragon-flies, bee-hawks, fatsun-beetles, gorgeous flies, the sinister green praying-mantis! TheAthena of the air expressed herself in all her wonder. 

 * * * * *

Ghilendzhik is a collection of datchas (country-houses) and Caucasiandwelling-places. Its name signifies "The White Bride, " and it is aquiet, beautiful watering-place in a pure bay, beloved of all Russianswho have ever visited it. It is the healthiest resort on the wholeBlack Sea shore, continually freshened by cool breezes from thesteppes. It is yet but a village, utterly undeveloped, unpavemented, without shops or trams or bathing-coaches, or a railway station, andthose who visit it in the season regard themselves rather as a familyparty. The beach is private, and a bathing costume is rather a rarity. It is an amazing testimony to the simplicity of the Russian thatthe upper classes behave at the seaside with little moreself-consciousness than the peasant children by the village stream. When Ghilendzhik is commercialised to a Russian Brighton it will bedifficult to imagine what an Eden it once was. 

I had looked forward to my arrival, for I had a Russian friend there, living for the summer in her own datcha, and I had received a verywarm invitation to stay there some days. 

The welcome was no less warm than the invitation. I arrived oneevening all covered with dust, my face a great flush of red from thesun, my limbs agreeably tired. The house was a little white one on thevery edge of the sea. Part of the verandah had lately been washed awayin a storm, so close was the datcha to the waves. I went in, washed, clad myself in fresh linen--the road-stained clothes were taken awaywith a promise of return clean on the morrow--borrowed some slippers, and sitting in an easy-chair on the verandah, lounged happily andchatted with my hostess. 

Varvara Ilinitchna is a Russian of the old type--you don't find manyof them nowadays, most of her friends would add--simple, quickwitted, full of peasant lore, kind as one's own mother, hospitable as thoseare hospitable who believe from their hearts that all men arebrothers. 

I was introduced to all the neighbours, to the visitors and thenatives, and of course invested with much importance as one who wrotebooks, had no fear, who even intended pilgrimaging to Jerusalem. 

"You sleep under the open sky--that means you have outlived fear, "said Varvara Ilinitchna with some innocence. 

Our next-door neighbour was a beautiful Greek girl, a veritable Helen, for the sake of whose beauty one might give up all things. Young, elegant, serpentine; clad in a single garment, a light cinnamon gownclasped at the waist; no stockings, her legs bare and brown; on herhead a Persian scarf embroidered with red and gold tinsel; her facewhite, with a delicate pink flush over it; hair and eyes black asnight, but also with a glitter of stars. Wherever she walked she was apicture, and whether she was working about the house, or idling witha cigarette on the verandah, or running over the sand to spankmischievous boys who had been trespassing, she was delicatelygraceful, something to watch and to remember. I shall rememberher chiefly in the setting of the night when the moon cast herlemon-coloured beams over the sea. 

"Very beautiful and very young, " said my hostess, "but already she hasa history. She is only eighteen, but is married and has run away fromher husband. She wanted to marry a Russian, but her family forcedher to take for husband a Greek, an old man, and so jealous and sofrightened of the effect of her beauty upon other men that he shut herup and made her wear a veil like a Turk. He would not let her out byherself, and he never brought any friends home; he took to beatingher, and then she ran away. Her father received her and promised toprotect her. The old Greek cannot get at her any more; he has givenher up and gone away. "

"Good for her!" I hazarded. 

"Not at all good, " was the answer. "She has a husband and yet hasnone. She is young, but she can't marry again because she has ahusband already. "

 * * * * *

At Ghilendzhik all meals were served on the verandah, and one livedconstantly in touch with the varying moods of the sea. 

My hostess was a talker, ready to sit to any hour of the nightchatting of her life and of Russia. It was very pleasant to listen toher. We sat together on the balcony after tea, with a big plate ofgrapes between us, and I heard all that the world had to say atGhilendzhik. 

A burning topic was the ruin that the sea had made of the verandahwall. "The sea has been gradually gaining on us, " said my friend. "When we came here, the village Council reckoned on that. They smiledwhen we bought the house, for they held that in quite a short time itwould be washed away. The Council wishes to build a fine esplanade allalong the sea-front--our house stands in the way and they don't wishto buy us out. 'You'd better buy the datcha, ' said Alexander Fed'otchto them. 'Oh no, ' said they, 'we leave that to God'--by 'God' meaningthe sea. They bound us under a contract not to build anything in frontof the house: they said they did not wish the view to be obstructed, but in reality they did not want us to put up any protection againstthe waves. They left the rest to Providence. The result was that thewhole property was nearly washed away in a storm. 

"It happened like this. We were away at Vladikavkaz, and Vassily, thewatchman, was living in the house with his wife and family, lookingafter it in our absence. There came a storm one evening. No one paidany attention at first, but it became so bad in the night that evenAtheists were at their prayers. At three o'clock in the morning allthe villagers were up and dressed and watching it. They were afraid, not only for our house, but for the rest of the village: no oneremembered such a storm. As for our datcha, being as it is the nearestto the sea, the waves were already washing stones and mortar away. Vassily worked as hard as man could, shifting the furniture, takingout his household things, and trying to save the house. The villagershelped him--even the councillors who had hoped for the storm, theyhelped. 

"The storm did not abate, so the priest was sent for, and he decidedto hold a prayer service on the seashore and ask God to make peace onthe water. They brought the Ikons and the banners from the church, took the Service in case of great storms or danger, and when theyhad sprinkled holy water on the waves, the storm drew to a lull andgradually died away. The datcha was saved; perhaps the whole village. _Slava Tebye Gospody!_ Glory be to Thee, O God!

"They wrote to us at Vladikavkaz what had happened, and of course wecame down quickly. Then what a to-do there was! We demanded the rightto protect our property from the sea. The Council said, 'Yes, yes, yes, don't alarm yourself; you'll be quite safe, safe as the Kazbekmountain; we ourselves will protect you. ' The Government engineer cameround and said once more, 'Don't alarm yourself! We are going to buildan embankment. Next year there will be a whole street in front of you, and electric trams going up and down perhaps. '"

"Did you believe him?" I asked. 

"We didn't know what to do, believe him or disbelieve, but we knew hehad been granted power to make investigations and draw up plans. Formonths, now, they have been measuring the depth of the water andtesting this place and that. For my part, I think the preparations areonly a device for making money. The engineer will enrich himself: theembankment and the street will be in his bank, but not here. The moneythey have spent already on his reports is appalling. But of course, ifthey _do_ build an esplanade, our house will be worth three times whatit cost us. We will let it as a café or a restaurant, and it willbring us rent all the year round. God grant it may be so!

"We resolved, however, to protect it, and we obtained permission tobuild a Chinese wall in front of it. But _Bozhe moi_, what that wallis costing us--already fifteen hundred roubles, and on the originalestimate we thought five hundred. 

"Even as it is we don't know how we stand. The engineer may claim thatwall as belonging to the town. The town may have it knocked down, forit is built just outside our boundary line. We go down to the sand, and we have built upon the sand. "

Obviously she hadn't built upon a rock. 

"Now that they think of making a street in front of us, they willcall part of the seashore land, and it will be surveyed. Someone willremark that we have encroached, and then down will go our wall andwith it our fifteen hundred roubles. "

I agreed with her and sympathised. The chances were certainly againstthe money having been profitably invested. But what an example ofRussian ways!

We sat in silence and looked out over the placid waves on whose futurekindliness so much of my hostess's happiness seemed to depend. It wasa beautiful night. The sun had sunk through a cloud into the sea, and, as he disappeared, the waves all seemed to grow stiller and paler;they seemed full of anxious terror, as the faces of women whosehusbands are just gone from their arms to the war. Dark curtainscame down over their grief: the waves disappeared. The long bay wasunruffled and grey to the horizon, like a sheet of unscored ice. Eventhe boats in the harbour seemed to be resting on something solid. Theone felucca in front of us, with its five lines of rope and mast, grewdarker and darker, till at last the moon rose and gleamed on her bowsand cordage. 

My hostess continued to talk to me of the fortunes of her property. "Twenty years ago, " she said, "I was sitting on a log in a field onesummer afternoon, when up comes an old peasant woman leaning on astick and speaks to me in an ancient, squeaky voice:

"'Good-day, _barinya_!'

"'Good-day!' I said. 

"'Would you like to buy a little wooden hut and some land?'

"'Eh, _Gospody_! What should I want with a little wooden hut?' said I. 'What do you ask for it?'

"'Fifty roubles, ' she squeaked. 'My son has written to me fromPoltava. He says, "Sell the hut and come and live with me, " so I'mjust looking for a buyer. '

"'What did you say?' I asked. 'Fifty roubles?'

"'Fifty roubles, _barinya_. Is it too much?'

"I was astonished. A house and land for fifty roubles. Such a matterhad to be inquired into. I felt I must go and look at the hut. I wentand saw it. It was all right, a nice little white cottage and thirtyor forty yards of garden to it. ' Here's your fifty roubles, ' I said. And I bought it on the spot. 

"We did nothing with it. 

"Next summer, when I came down to Ghilendzhik, I said to my husband, 'Let us go and see our house and land. ' Accordingly we went along tolook. What was our astonishment to find it occupied by another oldcrone. I went up to the door and said:

"'Good-day!'

"'Good-day!' said a cracked old voice. 'And who might you be?'

"'I might be the landlady, ' I said. 'How is it you're here?'

"'Oh, you're the _khosaika_, the hostess, ' replied the old crone. 'Eh, dear! Eh, deary, deary! My respects to you. I didn't know you were the_khosaika_. I saw an empty cottage here one day; it didn't seem tobelong to any one, so, as I hadn't one myself, I just came in. '

"The old dame bustled about apologetically. 

"'Never mind, ' said I. 'Live on, live on. '

"'Live on, ' said Alexander Fed'otch. 

"We went away and didn't come back to it or ask about it for seventeenyears. Then one day I received a letter offering me twenty pounds (twohundred roubles) for the property, but as I had no need of money Ipaid no attention. A month later some one offered me thirty pounds. Obviously there was something in the air; there was some reason forthe sudden lively interest in our property. Alexander Fed'otch wentdown, and he discovered that the site was wanted by the Government fora new vodka-shop. If we didn't sell, we should at last be forced togive up the property to the Government, and perhaps find ourselvesinvolved in litigation over it. Alexander Fed'otch made negotiations, and sold it for ninety pounds--nine hundred roubles--think of it. Andit only cost us five pounds to start with! Ah, here is a place whereyou can get rich if you only have a little capital. "

"The old woman?" I queried. "Was she evicted?"

"Oh no, she had disappeared--died, I suppose. "

"You made a handsome profit!"

"Yes, yes. But that's quite another history. You think we madeeighty-five pounds profit. No, no. We ought to have invested the moneyquietly, but unfortunately Alexander Fed'otch, when he was selling thehouse, met another man who persuaded him to buy a plot of land higherup, and to build a grandiose villa upon it. They thought it a splendididea, and Alexander Fed'otch paid the nine hundred roubles as partof the money down for the contractor. It was a great sorrow--for noprofit ever came of it. It happened in the revolutionary time. We paidthe contractor two thousand roubles, and then suddenly all his workmenwent on strike. He was an honest man, and it was not his fault. Hisname was Gretchkin. He went to Novorossisk to try to get together anew band of men, and there he met with a calamity. He arrived on theday when the mutinous sailors were hanged, and the sight so upset himthat he lost his head--he plunged into a barracks and began shootingat the officers with his revolver. He was arrested, tried, andcondemned to death. The sentence, however, was commuted to penalservitude--that was when we got our Duma and there was the generalpardon. Two thousand roubles were lost to us right away. The half-dugfoundations of our house remained--a melancholy sight. 

"The datcha is finished now; to-morrow you must go and see it. But ithas cost us in all ten thousand roubles. I should be thankful to sellit for five thousand. Ai, ai, and we are growing old now and livingthrough everything. "

My hostess went out to fetch another plate of grapes. 

"We wanted to put a vineyard round the datcha, but what with thechildren and the pigs mauling and biting at everything, it couldn't bemanaged. We had, however, a _pood_ of grapes from one of our gardensthis year. "

The moon now bathed her yellow reflection in the mysterious sea, andwe sat and looked at it together. 

"Vasia, my son, who has taken his musical degree, will stay up allnight to look at this sight, " said my hostess. "It moves something inhis soul. "

It moved something in mine, and yet seemed strangely alien to the taleI was hearing. That moon had flung its mystery over an Easternworld, and it seemed an irrelevance beside the fortunes of a modernwatering-place. 

Varvara Ilinitchna went on to tell me of her early days, and howshe and her husband had been poor. Alexander Fed'otch had taught inschools and received little money. Their two sons were never well. They had often wept over burdens too hard to bear. 

One season, however, there came a change in their life and they becameprosperous. They prayed to be rich, and God heard their prayer. 

"We owe the change in our fortunes to a famous Ikon, " said VarvaraIlinitchna. "It happened in this way. Alexander Fed'otch had an oldfriend who, after serving thirty years as a clerk in an office, suddenly gave up and took to the mountains. He was a wise man and knewmuch of life, and it was through his wisdom that we sent for the Ikon. We sheltered him all through the winters because he had no home, andhe came to love us and enter into our life. He rejoiced with us onfestivals when we were gay; when we were sad he sympathised. When weshed tears he shed tears also. One evening when we were more thanordinarily desperate he said to me, 'Take my advice; send for an Ikonof St. Spiridon of Tremifond. ' The Ikon costs ten shillings, and tenshillings was much to us in those days. I told Alexander Fed'otch whatour friend had said, and he, being a religious man, agreed. We sentten shillings to Moscow and had the Ikon sent to us, and we took it tochurch and had it blessed. 

"That happened in the autumn. Those were the days when the VladikavkazRailway was a novelty. The children, and even the grown-up people, didnothing but play at trains all day. We used to take in the children ofthe employees and look after them while their fathers and mothers wereaway. Well, in the following May a director of the railway called onAlexander Fed'otch and said he had a post to offer him. 

"'We are thinking of taking all the children of the railway employees, and establishing a school and _pension_ for them where they canget good meals and be taught. We will provide you with a house andappointments, and you will get a good salary into the bargain. Yourwife will be mother to our railway children, and you will be generalmanager of the establishment. Will you take the post?'

"'With pleasure!' answered Alexander Fed'otch. But I for my parttook some time to consider. It was hard enough to be mother to threechildren of my own. How could I be mother to fifty?

"However, we agreed to take the offer, and then suddenly we foundourselves rich and important people, and we remembered the Ikon of St. Spiridon of Tremifond and thanked God. If you are ever poor, if everyou want money, send for the Ikon of St. Spiridon. I advise you. Itsvirtues are famous. "

"An evil Ikon, nevertheless, that Spiridon of Tremifond, " I thought, but I wouldn't say so to my hostess. 

"And you've been happy ever since?" I asked. 

"Not happy. Who even hopes to be happy? But we did well. The railwaycompany opened new establishments, and the directors have loved myhusband, and one of them even said at a public meeting, 'Would to Godthere were more men in the world like Alexander Fed'otch!' We tooklarger charges and higher posts. We were even thanked publicly in thepress for our services. "

Varvara Ilinitchna sighed. Then she resumed her talking in a differenttone. 

"But we live through our fortune. Well, I understand it. It isour Karma after the Revolution. Property shall avail us nothing. Everything we have shall be taken from us. Look at this Chinese walltaking away all our money. Think of that foolish contractor Gretchkinand our costly datcha. Behold our sickly children. How much money havewe not spent trying to heal our children, eh, eh! Doctors have allfailed. Even a magic healer in the country failed. "

"Tell me of him, " I urged. 

Varvara Ilinitchna went on only too gladly. She had found a listener. 

"It was a peasant woman. She healed so many people that, though shewas quite illiterate, the medical faculty gave her a certificateto the effect that she could cure. I know for a fact that whenspecialists gave their patients up as hopeless cases, they recommendedher as a last resort. She was a miracle worker: she almost raised thedead. You must know, however, that she could only cure rheumatismcases. For other diseases there are other peasant women in variousparts of Russia. We went to this one and lived a whole summer with heron a very dirty, dismal countryside. We were all bored to death, andwe came away worse than we went. And all such things cost much, Iassure you. "

My hostess verily believed in the effect of the holy water on thestormy waves, in the gracious influence of St. Spiridon, and in themagical faculties of certain peasants. Yet observe she uses the word_Karma_: she calls herself a Theosophist. My long vagabondage shecalls my _Karma_. 

"My happiness, " I corrected her. 

"Happiness or unhappiness, it is all the same, your _Karma_. "

She went on to talk of the great powers of Mme. Blavatsky, and shetold me that Alexander Fed'otch had just ordered _The Secret Doctrine_to read. Good simple man, he will never get through a page of thatabstruse work; and my hostess will understand nothing. Is it notstrange--these people were peasants a generation ago; they arepeasants now by their goodness, hospitality, religion, superstition, and yet they aspire to be eclectic philosophers? Varvara Ilinitchnahas life itself to read, and she turns away to look at books. Lifedoes not satisfy her--there are great empty places in it, and shewould be bored often but that she has books to open in these places. She was very interesting to me as an example of the simple peasantmind under the influence of modern culture. Perhaps it is rather ashame to have put down all her old wife's talk in this way, for she islovable as one's own mother. 

VII

AT A FAIR

One misty morning in late October I arrived at Batum, pack on back, staff in hand, to all appearances a pilgrim or a tramp, and I dranktea at a farthing a glass in the fair. 

"Pour it out full and running over, " said a chance companion to theowner of the stall. "That's how we workmen like it; not half-full asfor gentlefolk. " The shopman, a silent and very dirty Turk, filled myglass and the saucer as well. And sipping tea and munching _bubliki_, we looked out upon all the sights of the _bazar_. 

There lay around, in all the squalor that Turks love, the marvelloussuperabundance of a southern harvest--spread on sacks in themud--grapes purple and silver-green, pomegranates in rusty thousands, large dew-fed yellow apples, luscious dirt-bespattered pears, suchfruits that in London even the rich might look at and sigh for, butpass by reflecting that with the taxes so high they could not affordthem, but here sold by ragamuffins to ragamuffins for greasy coppers;and not only these fruits, but quinces and peaches, the large yellowCaucasian _khurma_, the little blood-red _kizil_, and many unnamedrarities. They all surged up out of the waste of over-trodden mire, as if the pageantry of some fairy world had been arrested as it wasdisappearing into the earth. 

Then, beside these gorgeous fruits, in multitudinous attendance, aconfused array of scarlet runners, tomatoes, cabbages, out-tumbledsacks of glazy purple aubergines, mysterious-looking giganticpumpkins, buckets full of pyramidal maize-cobs, yellow, white-sheathed. 

The motley crowd of vendors, clamouring, gesticulating, are chieflydistinguished by their hats--the Arabs in white turbans, the Turksin dingy fezes jauntily cocked over dark, unshaven faces, some fezesswathed in bright silk scarves; the Caucasians in golden fleece hats, bright yellow sheepskin busbies; the few Russians in battered peakcaps, like porters' discarded head-gear; Persians in skull-caps;Armenians in shabby felts, astrakhans, or mud-coloured _bashliks_. The trousers of the Christians all very tight, the trousers ofthe Mahometans baggy, rainbow-coloured--it is a jealous point ofdifference in these parts that the Turk keeps four or five yards ofspare material in the seat of his trousers. 

What a din! what a clamour!

"_Kopeika, kopeika, kopeika_. "

"_Oko tre kopek, oko tre kopek, oko tre kopek. _"

Thus Christians shout against Mussulmans over the grape-heaps--onefarthing, one farthing, one farthing; oko (three pounds) threefarthings, oko three farthings, oko three farthings. Fancy shoutingoneself hoarse to persuade passers-by to buy grapes at a farthing apound!

My companion at the tea-stall, a tramp-workman from Central Russia, was astonished at the price of the grapes. 

"It is possible to say that that is cheap, " said he. "When I return toRussia I will take forty pounds of them and sell them in the train attwopence-halfpenny (ten _copecks_); that will pay for my ticket, Ithink, in the fourth class. "

I watched the Turks trafficking, jingling their ancient rustybalances, manipulating their Turkish weights--the _oko_ is notRussian--and giving what was probably the most marvellous short weightin Europe. The three-pound _oko_ was often little more than a pound. 

A native of Trebizond came and sat at our table. He wore carpet socks, and over them slippers with long toes curled upperward like certainspecimens one may see in Bethnal Green Museum; on his head astraw-plaited, rusty fez swathed with green silk of the colour of asun-beetle. 

"The Italians have taken Tripoli, " said the Russian, with a grin;"fancy letting those little people thump you so!"

"And the Japanese?" said a Caucasian quickly. 

The Turk looked sulky. 

"Italia will fall, " said he. "She will fall yet, dishonourablecountry. They have stolen Tripoli. All you others look on and smile. But it is an injustice. We shall cut the throats of all the Italiansin Turkey. Will you look on then and smile?"

A Greek sniggered. There were many Greeks at the fair--they all wearblue as the Turks all wear red. 

When the Turk had gone, the Greek exclaimed:

"There's a people, these Turks, stupid, stupid as sheep; all they needare horns . .. And illiterate! When will that people wake up, eh?"

The Turks and the Greeks never cease to spit at one another, thoughthe former can afford to feel dignified, victors of their wars withGreece. For the Italian the ordinary Turk has almost as much contemptas for the Greek. One said to me, as I thought, quite cleverly:

"A Greek is half an Italian, and the Italian is half a Frenchman, the Frenchman is half an Englishman, and you, my friend, are half aGerman. We have some respect for a German, for he is equal to a scoreof Greeks, a dozen Italians, or six Frenchmen, but we have no respectat all for the rest. "

Twenty Arabs passed us at the stall--all pashas, a Georgian informedme. They had arrived the night before from Trebizond and the desertbeyond. Their procession through the ragged market was something towonder at--a long file of warriors all over six feet high, broad, erect, with full flowing cloaks from their shoulders to their ankles, under the cloaks rich embroidered garments. Their faces were white andwrinkled, proud with all the assurance of men who have never knownwhat it is to stoop before the law and trade. 

"They have come to make a journey through Russia, " said the Georgian, "but their consul has turned them back. They will pray in the mosqueand then return. It is inconvenient that they should go to Europewhile there is the war. "

A prowling gendarme in official blue and red came up to the stall andsniffed at the company. He pounced on me. 

"Your letters of identification?" he asked. 

I handed him a recommendation I had from the Governor of Archangel. Hereturned it with such deference that all the other customers stared. Archangel was three thousand miles away. Russian governors have longarms. 

It is unpleasant, however, to be scrutinised and thought suspicious. Ifinished my tea and then returned to the crowd. There was yet more ofthe fair to see--the stalls of Caucasian wares, the silks, the guns, the knives, Armenian and Persian carpets, Turkish slippers, sandals, yards of brown pottery, where at each turn one sees huge pitchers andwater-jugs and jars that might have held the forty thieves. At onebooth harness is sold and high Turkish saddles, at another pannierbaskets for mules. A flood of colour on the pavement of a coveredway--a great disarray of little shrivelled lemons, with stalks inmany cases, for they have been gathered hard by. In the centre of themarket-place are all the meat and fish shops, and there one may seehuge sturgeon and salmon brought from the fisheries of the Caspian. Garish notices inform in five languages that fresh caviare is receivedeach day. Round about the butchers are sodden wooden stalls, labelled

 SNOW MERCHANTS, and there, wrapped in old rags, is much grey muddy snow melting andfreezing itself. It has been brought on rickety lorries down the ruttytracks of the mountains, down, down into the lowland of Batum, whereeven October suns are hot. 

Near the snow stalls behold veiled Turkish women just showing theirnoses out of bright rags, and tending the baking of chestnuts andmaize cobs, sausages, pies, fish, and chickens. Here for eightpenceone may buy a hot roast chicken in half a sheet of exercise-paper. Thepurchasers of hot chicken are many, and they take them away to opentables, where stand huge bottles of red wine and tubs of tomato-sauce. The fowl is pulled to bits limb by limb, and the customer dips, beforeeach bite, his bone in the common sauce-bowl. 

Those who are poorer buy hot maize cobs and cabbage pies; those whofeel hot already themselves are fain to go to the ice and lemonadestall, and spend odd farthings there. I bought myself _matsoni_, Metchnikof's sour milk and sugar, at a halfpenny a mug. 

The market square is vast. It is wonderful the number of scenesenacting themselves at the same time. All the morning in anotherquarter men were trying on old hats and overcoats, and having the mostamazing haggling over articles which are sold in London streets for apot of ferns or a china butter-dish. In another part popular picturesare spread out, oleographs showing the Garden of Eden, or the terrorof the Flood, or the Last Judgment, and such like; in another is awilderness of home-made bamboo furniture, a speciality of Batum. Andfor all no lack of customers. 

What a place of mystery is a Russian Fair, be it in the capital or atthe outposts of the Empire! There is nothing that may not be foundthere. One never knows what extraordinary or wonderful thing one maylight upon there. Among old rusty fire-irons one finds an ancientsword offered as a poker; among the litter of holy and secularsecondhand books, hand-painted missals of the earliest Russian times. 

Nothing is ever thrown away; even rusty nails find their way to the_bazar_. The miscellanies of a stall might upon occasion be what isleft behind after a house removal. On one table at Batum I observedtwo moth-eaten rusty fezes, a battered but unopened tin of herrings intomato-sauce, another tin half-emptied, a guitar with one string, agood hammer, a door-mat worn to holes, the clearing of a book-case, anold saucepan, an old kerosene stove, a broken coffee-grinder, and arusty spring mattress. Under the stall were two Persian greyhounds, also for sale. The shopmen ask outrageous prices, but do not expect tobe paid them. 

"How much the kerosinka?" I asked in sport. 

"Ten shillings, " said an old, sorrowful-looking Persian. 

I laughed sarcastically, and was about to move away. The Persian wastaking the oil-stove to bits to show me its inward perfection. 

"Name your price, " said he. 

I did not want a kerosene stove, but for fun I tried him on a lowfigure--

"Sixpence, " I said. 

"Whew!" The Persian looked about him dreamily. Did he sleep, did hedream?

"You don't buy a machine for sixpence, " said he. "I bought thissecond-hand for eight-and-sixpence. I can offer it to you for nineshillings as a favour. "

"Oh no, sixpence; not a farthing more. "

I walked away. 

"Five shillings, " cried the Persian--"four shillings. "

"Ninepence, " I replied, and moved farther away. 

"Two shillings. " He bawled something more, inaudibly, but I wasalready out of hearing. I happened to repass his stall accidentallylater in the morning. 

"That kerosinka, " said the Persian--"take it; it is yours at oneshilling and sixpence. "

I felt so sorry for the unhappy hawker, but I could not possibly buyan oil-stove. I could not take one as a gift; but I looked throughhis old books and there found, in a tattered condition, _The RedLaughter_, by Leonid Andreef, a drama by Gorky, a long poem bySkitaletz, and a most interesting account of Chekhof's life byKouprin, all of which I bought after a short haggle for fivepence, twenty copecks. I was the richer by my visit to his stall, for I foundgood reading for at least a week. And the old Persian accepted thesilver coin and dropped it into an old wooden box, looking the whilewith melancholy upon the unsold kerosinka. 

VIII

A TURKISH COFFEE-HOUSE

It sometimes happens that, entering a house, one enters not simplyinto the presence of a family but into that of a nation. So it waswhen I was received in a Little-Russian deacon's cottage in a village, on the Christmas Eve on which I first came to Russia. I came not tothe deacon but to Russia itself, and when the Christmas musicianscame and played before me it was not only Christmas music, or villagemusic, that I heard, but the voice of a whole countryside and the songof a whole national soul. It sometimes happens that, looking at apicture, one sees not only its local and obvious beauty, but itseternal significance and message--that is a similar experience. 

It happened to me whilst on a tramp in Trans-Caucasia to enter acoffee-house that was at once a Turkish coffee-house and Turkeyitself. I lived for a whole night veritably in Turkey. In this way--

I came into a little town; it was a cold night and I wanted shelter. I entered a noisy Turkish coffee-house--there were at least a hundredsuch in the town--and asked if I might spend the night there. Theowner, a young man in shirt-sleeves, very dirty and unshaven, and withan old fez on the side of his head, intimated that I might stay if Iliked. 

The café was a room full of poor Turks. Picture a crowd of ragged men, some in drab turbans with loose ends hanging down their backs, butmost of them in dingy red fez hats, faces unshaved, mottled, ugly--asquat people, very talkative, but terribly mirthless; and in shadowycorners of the low dark café solitary persons with hook-nosed, ruminative faces. All about me was the din of the strange language, the clatter of dice and dominoes. All night long the doors of the caféslammed and customers passed in and out, games were begun and playedaway, animated groups formed at certain tables and then broke upand gave way to new groups, loud discussions broke out over Turkishnewspapers and politics and the war, in the course of whichdiscussions the newspaper, a wilderness of Arabic, was often torn tobits--a series of scenes of tremendous animation and noise; but no onelaughed. 

In the clamour of tongues sounded again and again the name "Italia. "The Turks were angry over the war, full of a restrained resentment anda profound need for revenge. It was a relief to me when one of themcame to my table and talked to me in Russian. 

"How goes the war?" I asked. "Is Italy losing?"

"Of course she is losing, " he replied, lying sullenly; "and she mustlose. "

"But she has taken Tripoli and guards it with her navy. How can shelose?"

"The other Powers will make her disgorge it, or we will commence anendless hostility, not only against Italy and Italian trade, butagainst all whom we tolerate--the Western Christians. "

A Caucasian, overhearing us, drew his forefinger along his throat fromear to ear, and smiled. 

"There are more Mahometans than Christians, " the Turk went on, "andthey are strong men, heroes. The Italians are the worn-out scum ofancient Rome, getting the better of us ignobly. But they shall notspoil the Mahometan world. Not even the English, most powerful of themachine nations, shall overwhelm the true faith. "

The keeper of the coffee-house came and stared at me. Two newcustomers came up, and I was pointed out as an Englishman. They talkedabout me in Turkish; other Turks came, they talked about England'srôle in the war, they scolded, gesticulated, poured forth endlessly, forgot me. Once more, though in a crowd, I was alone. 

At this time a great diversion was caused. A blind musician came in. At midnight one would have thought no new development in the life ofthe café was likely to take place, but the musician brought intothe room such a crush of people that on all sides I felt packed andcrammed. A tall, gaunt man, hatless, shaggy-headed, his black locksfalling over a strange yellow brow; eyes that saw not, looking throughdeep purple spectacles; and in his arms, like a baby, a long Armenianguitar--the musician was somewhat to wonder at. Hemmed in by thecrowd, he yet found a little space in the body of the coffee-house, and danced to and fro with his songs like some strange being in afrenzy. He played with fire on his guitar, every minute breaking fromhis sparkling, thrilling accompaniment into a wild human chant, hisface the while triumphant and passionate, but blind with such utterblindness that he seemed like the symbol of Man's life rather thana man; a great song of heart-yearning sung to the stars and to theInfinite rather than the singer of that song. 

His fingers flowed over the long guitar; the wild words broke out; heflung himself in little zigzag steps to right, to left; the wildchant stopped; once more spoke only the strings. I looked at him andlistened, and could not give myself enough to him. 

At nearly two he made a collection and received many piastres andcopecks, and the crowd who had listened to him began to disperse. Atthree o'clock the host signified that he wished to close the shop. Toall the remaining customers Turkish delight was served out as a sortof parting gift. A dozen Turks, those who had homes, slunk away; theremainder, those who had no homes of their own, stayed to sleep. 

The host now came to me and we did some business. I wanted to changesome Turkish silver, as I was short of Russian money. As no bankwould take this small coin I was obliged to try the coffee-house. Accordingly, I had asked my coffee-house keeper to buy a hundred or sopiastres. After half an hour's haggling we struck a very bad bargain. I find the Turk more of a sharp than the Jew. 

The long day was over. The shutters were pulled along in front of theshop and padlocked. A form was accorded me on which to sleep. Anotherform was drawn out into the middle of the room and placed at a certainangle, pointing to the East, I suppose. Then during half an hour theTurks ascended this form in turn, stood, bowed, knelt, prostratedthemselves in silent prayer, reiteratedly. They prayed verydifferently from Russian peasants. Their movements were abrupt andmechanical, like steps in a military drill. They were nearer tospiritual death and praying-boxes than any I had ever watched praybefore. I felt myself in the presence of a new form of piety. I hadcrossed the great broad line that separates Europe from Asia, and cometo a place where Europe is not understood and therefore hated. 

At six next morning the sleepers awoke and performed the same rites onthe improvised praying-stool; the shutters were rolled back; theTurks who had homes returned; in came the Arabic newspaper; oncemore Turkish delight, coffee, the clatter of dice and dominoes, thegathering of animated groups, loud, unpleasant voices and mirthlessvivacity--so the life of the coffee-house went on; so I imagine itgoes on for ever. 

 * * * * *

As I think of this in retrospect it seems that the blind musicianstood in some peculiar and significant relation to the more ordinarylife about him. But for him, I should probably have omitted todescribe my night among the Turks. He made the coffee-house worthliving in, worth sketching, worth being re-seen in the reflection ofwords. He was what I should call the glory of the coffee-house. 

Thus the garden of Eden was beautiful, but Adam and Eve in the gardenwere the glory of the garden, the highest significance of its beauty, the voice by which relatively dumb beauty got a step farther inexpressing itself. The garden would never have been described but forthe episode of Adam and Eve. It would not have been worth while todescribe it. .. . The forest is beautiful, but the bird singing in theforest is the glory of the forest. The morning is beautiful, but thetramp walking in the morning is the glory of the morning; he also, inhis youth and morning of life, is a voice by which beauty endeavoursto reveal itself. 

Each scene, each picture, has a highest significance if we could butfind it. Thus the blind musician was a revelation of the very soul ofthe Turks. The tramp wandering through life and exploring it triesalways to find what is particularly his in the scenes that come beforehis eyes. It is what he means by living a daily life in the presenceof the Infinite. 

IX

AT A GREAT MONASTERY

I

In the Middle Ages, when Christianity was still young, there was muchmore hospitality than to-day. The crusader and the palmer needed nointroduction to obtain entertainment at a strange man's house. Thedoors of castle or cottage, of monastery or cell, were always on thelatch to the wanderer, and not only to those performing sacred duesbut to the vagabond, the minstrel, the messenger, the tradesman, evento crabbed Isaac of York. 

Since those days it has become clear that the thirty pieces of silvernot only sold the author of Christianity but Christianity itself. Asmy Little-Russian deacon said, "Money has come between us and made uswork more and love less. We are gathered together, not for love butfor mutual profit. It is all the difference between conviviality andgregariousness. " The deacon was right, and when one comes uponthe Middle Ages, as yet untouched, in Russia, one reflects with asigh--"The whole of Europe, even England, was like this once. " Onesays with Arnold--

 The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. 

Day by day, as we live, we see the disintegration of that whichChristianity means, the shattering of that brotherly love that makesmen nations and nations the children of God. Not without truth didShylock say of his money that he made it breed. The pieces of silverhave bred well; they jingle to-day in the pockets of millions ofbetrayers. 

These thirty pieces did not pass out of currency, though the land thatthey bought was left desolate. They passed from hand to hand amongthe covetous throughout the first centuries of Christianity. The Jewsclung to them as if they were life itself; but the early Christians, having something very much better than money to live for, coveted themnot. And as long as the money remained with the Jews Christianityflourished. The two symbols opposed one another, and there was noquestion but that the Cross triumphed. Only when the Christians turnedtheir backs on the Cross and hankered after the silver did the eternalnature of the betrayal manifest itself. When the Saracens began to befought, not only by swords and faith but by the aid of Jewish money, and with the pomp and circumstance of war, then already Judas had beento the priests. When the knight or baron bequeathed the thirty Jewishpieces to the monastery Judas was already kissing the Master. When thehand that held the Cross loosened to take the silver, when the monkstook the treasure of Earth and relinquished the treasure of Heaven, Jesus was already taken. It was but a short way to the crucifixion. The silver profiteth no man. 

Where are the thirty pieces of silver now? Where are they not? Whenthe rich holiday-maker comes scattering money in peaceful mountainvalleys; when the peasant's son, infected by the idea of money, comesto town for his thirty shillings a week; when for the want of anotherthirty shillings he refuses to marry; when to save his mind someevangelical society--so called--accepts thirty shillings "charity";when the millionaire leaves thirty thousand pounds to the hospitals tosave his body; when a minister is paid three hundred pounds a year tosave his soul; when a member of Parliament receives thirty pounds amonth to remedy his social wrongs; when the love of the country girlhe should have married is won by some rich man who thinks he can payfor it--on all these occasions and yet more, to examples innumerable, the curse of Judas shows itself, till every brick of our evilindustrial cities is shown mortared round in bright silver hate. 

 * * * * *

As I write these lines one question is very urgent in the minds ofEnglishmen, that of the disestablishment and partial disendowment of achurch. Once more the thirty pieces appear to be in the coffers of thechurch and they are attracting the curse. There is only one way forthat church; it is to give up to the spoiler not only that whichis demanded of it but all the material wealth it possesses, itsendowments, estates, houses, palaces, sacred edifices; to lay downeverything and be simply, for the moment, a church in the hand of God. As for disestablishment, the sooner Christians dissociate themselvesfrom secular names and titles the better. The Christian church is oneestablished for ever, upon a rock, and those who compose that churchare they who love their neighbour as a brother. 

We have hope of new life, otherwise it were folly to write at all. Thegreat distress which the modern commercial life causes the individualsoul is perhaps a blessing in disguise; it causes the individual topause and think, causes him to rebel, to try and imagine a way to truesalvation. For, despite Progress and the benefit our posterity issupposed to be going to derive from it, it is an undisguisable factthat life, the wonderful and strange gift given to the individualperhaps once in an eternity, is being used without profit, withoutpause, without wonder. We are like people who have lost their memorieson the way to a feast, and our steps, in which is only dimly feltthe remembrance of a purpose, take us nowhither. We loiter in mustywaiting-rooms, are frustrated by mobs, and foiled by an eternalclamour. We have forgotten the feast and occupy ourselves in allmanner of foolish and irrelevant ways. Only now and again, struckby the absurdity of our occupations, we grope after our lostconsciousness and feel somehow that somewhere out beyond is our realdestination, that somewhere out there a feast is proceeding, that acover is laid for us and dishes served, that though we are absent themaster calls a toast to us and sends messengers to find us. 

 * * * * *

The _somewhere-out-beyond_ has for me been Russia. I do not suggestthat it is Russia for every one. There are many tables at the feast, and the messenger sent after the absent must tell of those who sit athis own table. I think there is the same wine and the same fare at alltables. I tell of the hospitality of Russia, the hospitality of mindand of hand found amongst a simple people. 

In October 1911 I arrived as a pilgrim at the monastery of Novy Afon, or, to translate the Russian into more recognisable terms, New Athos, and I obtained the hospitality of the monks. 

There are three sorts of monasteries in Russia, one where there isgreat store of gold and precious stones as in Troitsky Lavra nearMoscow, another where there are ancient relics and ikons of miraculouspower as at Solovetz, and a third where there is neither thedistinction of gold nor of relics, where the power of the monks liesin their living actual work and prayer. To the last-named categorybelongs Novy Afon. 

It is very likely that the immense wealth of the other monasteries mayinvite the hand of the spoiler. Even now the monks are notorious fordrunkenness and corruptibility: the institutions are moribund, andthere is no doubt that if revolution had overturned the Tsardom therich monasteries like the Troitsky would have been sacked. Perhapseven Novy Afon and many another spiritual mother would have shareda common fate with their depraved sisters. That is as may be. TheRevolution did not succeed and could not, because the common peasantrystill prayed in the temples which the Revolutionaries would havedestroyed. The living church of Russia required its buildings eventhough the caretakers of these buildings were in some cases falsestewards. 

But there is no question of false stewards at Novy Afon. It is a placewhere a Luther might serve and feel no discontent, a place of newlife. It looks into the future with eyes that see visions, andstretches forward to that future with hands that are creative; aninstitution with no past but only a present and an idea, not acting byprecedent or tradition but taking its inspiration straight from life'ssources. 

II

It will be profitable to describe the monastery just as I saw it andfelt it to be, on the occasion of my arrival there after five hundredmiles tramping in the autumn of 1911. I had overtaken many pilgrimsjourneying thither, and the nearer I approached the more became theirnumbers. There were many on foot and many in carts and coaches. Multi-coloured diligences were packed with people and luggage--thepeople often more miscellaneously packed than the luggage, clingingon behind, squashed in the middle, sprawling on the top. The driverslooked superb though dressed in thousand-times-mended black coats, thepost-boys tootled on their horns, and the passengers sang or shoutedto the music of accordions. Of course not all those in the coacheswere pilgrims religiously inclined; many were holiday seekers out forthe day. The gates of Novy Afon are open to all, even to the Mahometanor the Pagan. It was a beautiful cloudless morning when I arrived atthis most wonderful monastery in the Russian world--a cluster of whitechurches on a hill, a swarm of factories and workshops, cedar avenues, orchards, vineyards, and, above all, tree-covered mountains crowned bygrey towers and ancient ruins, the whole looking out on the far sea. 

At the monastery gates were a cluster of empty coaches waiting forpassengers, the drivers sitting in the dusty roadway meanwhile, playing cards or eating chunks of red melon. Pilgrims with greatbundles on their backs stood staring vacantly at the walls or at thesea; monks in long grey cloaks, square hats, and long hair, passed inand out like bees about a hive, and from a distance came a musicaldrone, the chanting of church services. 

Pack on back, staff in hand, no one took me for other than a Russianpilgrim till I showed my passport. I entered the monastery, asked oneof the monks where to go, and was at once shown to a room, a littlesquare whitewashed apartment with four hard couches; the room lookedupon the hostelry yard, and was lit within by electric light--themonks' own manufacture. No one asked me any questions--they were toohospitable to do that. I was at once taken for granted as one mightbe by one's own family after returning home from a week-end in thecountry. When I had disposed my clothes, brushed away some of thedust, changed boots, and washed, the novice who had shown me my roomtapped at the door and, looking in with a smile, told me I had comejust in time for dinner. All along the many corridors I heard thetinkling of a dinner-bell and a scuttling of many feet. 

The dinner was served in three halls: two of them were more exclusiveapartments where those might go who did not care to rub shoulders withthe common people; but the other was a large barn where any one wholiked to come took the chances of his fellow-man, be he peasant orpilgrim. It was in the barn that I took my seat among a great crowd offolk at two long, narrow tables. Round about us on the walls were amultiplicity of brightly coloured ikons, pictures of the abbot, ofTsars, of miraculous happenings and last judgments. On the tables atregular intervals were large iron saucepans full of soup, platters ofblack bread, and flagons of red wine. 

A notice on the wall informed that without prayer eating or drinkingwas forbidden, and I wondered what was going to happen; for althoughwe had all helped ourselves in Russian fashion, no one had as yet saidgrace, and there was an air of waiting among the party. Suddenly avoice of command cried "Stand!" and we all stood like soldiers ondrill. We all faced round to the ikons, and to a monk standing infront of them. A long prayer was said in a very military fashion, andthen we all crossed ourselves and took our places at the tables oncemore. Five of the brethren were in attendance, and fluttered up anddown, shifting the bread or refilling the wine bowls. 

We were a mixed company--aged road-worn pilgrims, bright boys comefrom a local watering-place by coach, red-kerchiefed peasant women, pleasant citizens' wives in town-made blouses, Caucasians, a Turk, aJew, an Austrian waiter, and many others that I took no stock of. 

The diet is a fast one, just as the hard beds are penance beds, andno one can procure anything different at Novy Afon for any amount ofmoney. Even in the hall reserved for dignitaries and officials thefare was the same as for us in the _tiers état_. The soup was ofvegetables only, and much inferior to what the tramp makes for himselfby the roadside. The second course was cold salt fish or boiled beansand mushrooms, and the third was dry maize-meal porridge. As eachplate was put on the table the brother told us it came from God, andwhispered a blessing. 

There was not much talking; every one was busy eating and drinking. The wine was drunk plentifully, though without any toasts. One feltthat more generosity was expressed in the provision of wine than inthe other victuals. But for the meal only ten minutes and then oncemore the peremptory voice "Stand!" and we all listened to a longthank-offering and bowed before the ikons. Dinner was over. 

Dinner was at eleven in the morning; tea with black bread and nobutter at three; supper, a repetition of the dinner menu, at seven;and all doors closed and the people in their beds by eight-thirty. After many nights in the open I slept once more with a roof over myhead, and looking up in the night, missed the stars and wondered wherethey were. 

III

The monastery bells in pleasant liquid tones struck every quarter ofan hour, and at two o'clock in the morning I was awakened by a greatjangling, and the sound of steps along the stone corridors. I asked mycompanions--I was sharing my room with an Armenian and a Russian--whatwas the reason of the bell, and I learned that it was the call toearly prayers. We none of us got up, but I resolved to go next nightif it were possible. 

Next day was one of relaxation after tramping. The Armenian went offten miles to a celebrated cave and a point of view, "the swallows'nest"; he wished me to accompany him, but I had not come to Novy Afonto find points of view or the picturesque--moreover he had come bysteamboat and was fresh, I had come on foot five hundred miles andwanted a rest. 

In the morning I looked through the workshops, chatted with a master inthe little monastery school, lounged in the orange groves and cedaravenues. After dinner, as I sat near the pier, a monk pointed out to mesome artificial water where willows drooped, and white swans rodegracefully under them. "You ought to come here at_Kreschenie_--Twelfth-Night. We make of that water a little Jordan inmemory of the Jordan where the Son of God was baptized. The ponds areall decorated with fresh-cut grass, laurel leaves, and cypress branches, myrtle and oleander, many roses and wild flowers. Scarcely anywhere inall Russia could there be found such flowers at that time of the year. "

"Have you pilgrims then?" I asked. 

"Oh yes, many. They come from all the district round about, to dipthemselves in the water after it has been made holy. We keep thefestival very solemnly. The Archimandrite comes down from themonastery, and after him the priests, the monks, the lay brethren, thelabourers, the banners and their bearers, and the sacred Ikons. Thereis a long service. Though the month is January, the weather isoften bright and warm as early summer, and the mountains look verybeautiful. "

As we were thus talking, the Archimandrite, Ieronym himself, cameout of the hostelry yard and passed us, a benign old man, devout andancient of aspect, but kindly and wise. He is accounted a livingsaint, and it may well be that after his death he will be canonised. Novy Afon has only been in existence thirty years, and he has beenabbot all the time. The monastery has been his own idea, it has grownwith him. If Novy Afon is a fountain of life, he is the rock out ofwhich the fountain springs. The whole monastery and all its ways areunder his guidance, and as he wishes them to be. They are as a goodbook that he has written, and better than that. 

He went to a gorgeous little chapel at the base of the landing-stage, there to hold a service in memory of the visit to New Athos of theirhighnesses the late Tsar, Alexander the Third, and his queen, on thatday 1888. Presently behold the worthy abbot in his glorious robes, cloth of gold from head to foot, and on his head, instead of thesombre black hat of ordinary wear, a great golden crown sparkling withdiamonds and rubies. The many clergy stood about him in the littletemple, or beyond the door, for there was not room for all, with themsome hundred monks, and the multifarious populace. The service wasread in hollow, oracular tones, and every now and then a storm ofglorious bass voices broke forth in response. Evidently the Ikon ofthe Virgin named _Izbavelnitsa_ was being thanked for her protectionof the Tsar in a storm. So much I could make out; and every now andthen the crowd sang thanks to the Virgin. At the end of the servicethe Archimandrite, who had had his back to the people all the time--orrather, to put it more truly, had all the time looked the same way, _with_ the people--turned, and lifting and lowering the gold crosswhich he held in his hands, gave blessing. The heads and bodies of theworshippers bowed as the Cross pointed toward them. 

The service was over. As the abbot Ieronym resumed his ordinaryattire, and left the temple, the hundred or so peasant men and womenpressed around him, and fervently kissed his little old fingers, whiteand delicate. I watched the old man give his hand to them--I watchedtheir eagerness. Religion was proved to be Love. 

IV

What struck me particularly on entering Novy Afon was the new tone inthe every day. There was less of the _barin_ and servant, officerand soldier feeling, less noisy commandings and scoldings, even lessbeating of the patient horses that have to carry such heavy loads inRussia. Instead of these, a gentleness and graciousness, something ofthat which one finds in artistic and mystic communities in Russia, inart and in pictures, but which one seldom meets with in public life. Here at New Athos breathes a true Christianity. It was strange howeven the undying curiosity of the Russian had been conquered; for hereI was not asked the thousand and one impertinent questions that it isusually my lot to smile over and answer. There was even a restraint inasking me necessary questions lest they should be difficult to answer. 

Then not one of the monks possesses any property of his own, even of apurely transitory kind, such as a bed or a suit of clothes. They haveall in common, and they have not that nicety or necessity of privacywhich would compel an Englishman to claim the right to wear the samecoat and trousers two days running. But the monks are even lessdiffident of claiming their own separate mugs and plates at table, andare unoffended by miscellaneous eating and drinking from one another'sdishes. 

Every one is the servant of all--and without hypocrisy--not only inact but in sentiment and prayer. Wherever I went I found the tone ringtrue. 

This fair exterior glory seems to spring from a strong inner life. Religious life in the Holy Orthodox Church, with its many ordinancesand its extraordinary proximity to everyday life, is not allowed to bemonotonous and humdrum. Each day at New Athos is beautiful in itself, and if a monk's life were made into a book of such days one would notturn over two pages at once. 

The day begins at midnight, when, to the occasional melancholy chimeof the cathedral bell, the brothers move to the first service of themorning. On my second night at Afon I wakened at the prayer-bell andjoined the monks at their service. In the sky was a faint glimmer ofstars behind veiling clouds. The monastery, resplendent with marbleand silver by day, was now meek and white in the dark bosom of themountain, and shining like a candle. In the church which I enteredthere was but one dim light. The clergy, the monks, the faces in theikon frames all were shadows, and from a distance came hollow shadowmusic, _gul-l-l_, the murmur of the sea upon the shore. It was thestill night of the heart where the Dove yet broods over the waters andlife is only just begun. At that service a day began, a small life. 

When the service was over and we returned to our rooms, morning hadadvanced a small step; the stars were paler, one just made out thecontours of the shadowy crags above us. 

Just a little sleep and then time to rise and wash and breakfast. Themonks in charge of the kitchen must be up some time before the restof us. At 8 A. M. The morning service commences, and every monk mustattend. 

Then each man goes to his work, some to the carpentry sheds, othersto the unfinished buildings, to the brickworks, the basket works, thecattle yards, the orchards and gardens, the cornfields, the laundries, leather works, forges, etc. , etc. , etc. ; the teachers to the schoolswhere the little Caucasian children are taught; the abbot to his cell, where he receives the brothers in turn, hears any confession they maywish to make, and gives advice in any sorrow that may have come uponany of them. The old abbot is greatly beloved, and the monks havechildren's hearts. Again in the evening the day is concluded in songand prayer. Such is the monastery day. 

 * * * * *

No doubt the upkeep of this great establishment costs much; it doesnot "pay"--the kingdom of God doesn't really "pay. " Much money has tobe sent yearly to Novy Afon . .. And yet probably not so very much. Inany case, it is all purely administered, for there are no bribe takersat the monastery. For the rest, it must be remembered that they maketheir own clothes and tools, grow their own corn and fruits, andmanufacture their own electric light. They have the means ofindependence. 

Such monasteries as Novy Afon are true institutions of Christianity;they do more for the real welfare of a people than much else on whichimmense sums of money are spent. It is a matter of real charity andreal hospitality both of hand and mind combined. The great monasterysits there among the hills like some immense mother for all the rude, rough-handed tribes that live about. In her love she sets an example. By her open-handedness she makes her guests her own children; theylearn of her. Not only does she say with Christ her Master, "Sufferthe little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom ofheaven, " but she makes of all those who come to her, be they fierce ofaspect or bearded like the pard, her own children. When the night-bellhas rung and all are in their beds--the five hundred brethren, themany lay workers, the hundreds of guests gathered from all parts ofRussia--the spirit of the monastery spreads itself out over all ofthem and keeps them all warm. The whole monastery is a home, and allthose who are within are brothers and sisters. 

V

Though Novy Afon is new, it is built upon an old site. There was aChristian church there in the second and third centuries, but it wasdestroyed by the Persian fire-worshippers; it was restored by theEmperor Justinian, but destroyed once more by the Turks. So completelydid the Moslem take possession of the country that Christianityentirely lapsed till the Russian monks sailed down there two yearsbefore the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Novy Afon is without Christiantraditions. It takes its stand completely in the new, and is part ofthat Russian faith which has no past, but only a future. The thirdcentury ruins of the cathedral and the Roman battlements are indeed ofgreat interest, and many people climb the two thousand feet high cragto look out from the ancient watch-tower. But the attitude of themonastery is well explained in the words of a monk:

"People come here to worship God, and we stand here as a witness ofGod, to pray continually for the coming of the Kingdom, and to succourthose who come to us. It would be a sign of disrespect to our churchif people came here merely to see the ancient remains. "

I for my part, being of the old though also of the new, was eagerto climb the steep stone way along which in ancient days had riddencrusaders and mediaeval warriors. Great trees now grew through therent wall of the cathedral, and slender birches grew straight up inthe nave to the eternal roof which had supplanted that of time--toheaven itself. .. . 

But alas for romance, the Russians are restoring the church, clearingaway the old stones, chopping down the trees. An ikon has been set upwithin the old building, and the latter is already a place of worship. Once more: to the eye of a monk a ruined temple is somewhat of aninsult to God. There is no fond antiquarianism; all the old Latininscriptions and bas-reliefs that have been found have been mortaredtogether at random into one wall; all the human bones that have beenunearthed, and they are many, have been thrown unceremoniously into anopen box. Even on the bare white ribs and ancient crumbling skulls, bourgeois visitors have written their twentieth-century names. Someancient skeletons have been preserved in a case from pre-Mahometantimes, and under them is written:

 With love, we ask you, look upon us. We were like you; you will be like us. 

The recommendation is unavailing. The bones have been picked up, passed from hand to hand, scrawled upon, joked over. They are probablythe remains of strong warriors and early Christians, and one canimagine with what peculiar sensations they, in their day, would haveregarded this irreverence to their bones could they but have lookedforward a thousand years or so. 

It seemed to me, looking out from the watch-tower of Iver over thediminished monastery buildings and the vast and glorious sea, on thatwhich must change and on that which in all ages remains ever the same, some reverence might have been begotten for that in the past whichshows what we shall be in the future. The monks might have spared thebones and buried them; they might have left the ruins as they were. 

I am told that in a few years the work of restoration will becompletely achieved, services will be held regularly on the mountaintop, and peasant pilgrims will gladly, if patiently, climb morning andevening up the stone way to the church, having no thoughts of any timebut that in which they are worshipping. The Russian is racially young. He is in the morning and full of prophecy; only in the evening willhis eye linger here in the emotions of romance. 

Life at the monastery is new life; it is morning there--it is indeedonly a little after the dawn. The day is as yet cool and sweet, and itgives many promises. We can see what the morning is like if we willjourney thither. 

III

I

THE BOY WHO NEVER GROWS OLD

Up to Christmas we are walking with the kings to the Babe's cradle, to the birth of new life and new hope. High in the heavens, and yetbefore us over the hard frost-bitten way, gleams the guiding starwhose promise we divine. After Christmas we are walking with thespring, with a new, young, whispering child-life in the old heart. Though the winds be cold and snow sweep over the land, we know thatwinter and death are spent. Whilst the light grows stronger in thesky, something in us that is wooed by light responds. New eyes openin the soul. Spring comes, and then the tramp is marching with thesummer. Down come the floods, and often for hours one takes shelterfrom the rain, and it seems as if all we hope for were beinginundated. But, as I wrote before, "the spring is not advanced byrain, but it gathers strength in the rain to proceed more quickly whenthe sun comes out: so also with the tramp. " Summer is the year itself, all that the other seasons have laboured for. It is the glory of theyear. Then may the tramp cease marching, for in the height of summernature also must cease, must cease from going forward to turn back. Hemay rest in the sun and mature his fruits. Autumn is coming and allthe year's beauties must yield to death. 

I think of my autumn on the way to Jerusalem, and all that a day toldme then. The skies became grey at last, and cold searching winds stoleinto the summer weather. Many things that by sunlight I should haverejoiced in became sombre and ugly in the shade. The tobacco farms, with their myriad tobacco leaves drying and rotting from green intoyellow, became ill-kept and untidy, the peasants harvesting them surlyand unwashed: the sky spread over them no glamour. 

I was walking over the swamps of Sukhum, and I noticed all that Idisliked--the deep dust on the road, the broken-down bridges, thestreams that cattle had befouled. It was perhaps a district thatlacked charm even in fine weather. 

There were some compensations. In a wilderness of wilted maize fields, and mud or wattle-built villages, one's eyes rested with affectionupon slender trees laden with rosy pomegranates--the pomegranate onthe branch is a lovely rusty-brown fruit, and the tree is like a briarwith large berries. Then the ancient Drandsky Monastery was a fairsight, white-walled and green-roofed against the background of blackmountains, the mountains in turn shown off against the snowy rangesof the interior Caucasus. The clouds hung unevenly over the climbingmountains, so that far snow-bestrewn headlands looked like the specklybacks of monsters stalking up into the sky. 

I walked through miles and miles of brown bracken and rosy witheredazalea leaves. There came a day of rain, and I spent thirty-six hoursin a deserted house, staring most of the time at the continuous drenchthat poured from the sky. I made myself tea several times from therainwater that rushed off the roof. I crouched over a log fire, andwondered where the summer had gone. 

It needed but a day of rain to show how tired all nature was. Theleaves that were weighed down with water failed to spring back whenthe rain had passed. The dry and dusty shrubs did not wash green asthey do in the spring. All became yellower and browner. That which hadcome out of the earth took a long step back towards the earth again. 

Tramping all day through a sodden forest, I also experienced theautumnal feeling, the promise of rest, a new gentleness. All thingswhich have _lived_ through the summer welcome the autumn, the twilightof the long hot day, the grey curtain pulled down over a drama whichis played out. 

All day the leaves blew down as if the trees were preparing beds forthe night of winter. In a month all the woods would be bare and stark, the bushes naked, the wild flowers lost in the copse; nought green butthe evergreens. And yet but a week ago, rhododendrons at New Athos, wild roses and mallow in full bloom at Gudaout, acres of saffronhollyhocks, and evening primroses at Sotchi!

I had entered an exposed country, colder than much of the land thatlay far to the north. 

Two days later the clouds moved away, the zenith cleared, and after itthe whole sky, and then along the west and the south, as far as eyecould see, was a great snow-field, mountain after mountain, and slopeafter slope all white to the sky. A cold wind, as of January, blewkeenly from the snow, and even froze the puddles on the road. Itseemed we had journeyed thus suddenly not only to autumn, but towinter itself. 

But at noon the sun was hot again. The new-born brimstone butterflieswere upon the wing, a flutter of lambent green. They were of the time, and young. They must live all winter and waken every sunny day tillnext spring--the ambassadors of this summer to the next. 

All that belongs to the past is tired, and even at the bidding ofthe sun insect life is loth to rise. The grasshopper is tired, thedragon-fly loves to crouch among the shadows, the summer-worstedfritillary butterflies pick themselves out of their resting-places toflutter a little further; their wings, once thick with yellow down andshapely, are now all broken, transparent, ragged. 

The tramp's summer also is over. He will not lie full length in thesun till the spring comes round again. For the ground is wet, and thecold is searching. I walked more miles in the cold fortnight that tookme to Batoum than in a whole month before New Athos. There was in theair a sting "that bids nor sit nor stand, but go. "

Yet thoughts were plentiful, and many memories of past autumns cameback to me. How many are the rich, melancholy afternoons of lateOctober or early November, golden afternoons that occur year afteryear, when one feels one's thoughts parting from the mind easily andplentifully without urging, as overripe fruit falling at last since noone has grasped it before. 

I hurried along the road, full of sad thoughts. The year was growingto be an old man. It looked back at spring, at the early days when itfirst felt the promises of life's glory and scarcely dared believethem true, at laughing May, at wide and spacious June, and then theturning of the year. 

It almost seemed to me that I had grown old with the year, that I hadeven gathered in my fruits, as indeed I had, only they were more theyear's fruits than mine: I had been the guest of the year. 

I walked as within sight of a goal. In my imagination I saw ahead ofme the winter stretches of country that I should come to, all whitewith snow, the trees all hoar, the people all frosted. I had literallybecome aware of the fact that I was travelling not only over land butover time. In the far horizon of the imagination I looked to the snowylandscapes of winter, and they lay across the road, hiding it, so thatit seemed I should go no further. 

Old age, old age; I was an old, bearded, heavy-going, wrinkled tramp, leaning on a stout stick; my grey hairs blew about my old red ears inwisps. I stopped all passers-by upon the road, and chuckled over oldjokes or detained them with garrulity. 

But no, not old; nor will the tramp ever be old, for he has in hisbosom that by virtue of which, even in old age, he remains a boy. There is in him, like the spring buds among the withered leaves ofautumn, one never-dying fountain of youth. He is the boy who nevergrows old. 

Father Time, when he comes and takes some of us along his ways intomiddle-age, will have to pull. Time is a dotard, an aged parent; someboys that are very strong and young are almost too much for him; whenhe comes to take them from the garden of boyhood they kick andpunch; when Time tries to coax them, pointing out the advantages ofmiddle-age, they turn their heads from him and refuse to listen. If atlast they are taken away by main force, it is with their backs to thefuture, and their faces all angry, twisted, agonised, looking back atthe garden in which they want to stay. 

II

THE STORY OF ZENOBIA

I have known her in summer and in winter--in summer flushed andgorgeous like the wild rose, in winter lily-pale, or grey and haggardas the town she lived in. She was a beautiful daughter of the Earth, awondrous flower. The summer night was in her dark hair, the south windin her eyes. Whoever looked upon her in silence knew himself in thepresence of the mystery of beauty, of the mystery of an imperiousinner beauty. It was because of this, because of some majestic spiritmanifest in her, shining through her in soul's colours, that I calledher Zenobia, naming her after that Blythedale Zenobia who always worethe rich hot-house flower in her bosom. And it was to me as if myZenobia wore that flower there also, and in silence, a new flower eachday, wondrous and rich. Never could she be seen without that flowerthere, and it was as if on that flower depended her very life. Shouldthe flower at any time be wanting, then all were wanting. 

I remember her as she was one June when we gathered eglantinetogether, and the richest and deepest of all reds in roses. In themidsummer afternoons we plucked our garlands and brought them home atsunset time. Such afternoons they were, tempting all living thingsinto the symphony of glory, such afternoons of splendour that now, looking back, it seems to be the very acme of their glory that we alsowere to be found there in those woods with all the rest. We came, soft stepping into the scene, and Nature, which moves continuously, harmoniously, did in the same moment build a throne and take us in it. At once the life from us flowed out, and the life about flowed in. Surely these were days of large orchestras, and of wonderful andcomplex melodies. Zenobia moved like a queen over the scene, her richgarments sweeping over the soft grass, her graceful arms swinging aswith secret blessings. All the living things of the day seemed eagerto be her pages; she was indeed a queen. The world needed her and theworld went well because of her. The birds sang, they had not sung sosweetly but for her; the sun shone, it had not shone so brightly butfor her; the roses stood on tiptoe on the bushes asking to be pickedby her; the very air played lovingly about her, stealing and givingfreshness. 

The memory of all this comes out to me with a rush whenever I opena book of poems at a certain page, and with it comes the odour ofsweet-brier and honeysuckle. It was in a June, one of the past Juneswhen we also were June glory, beautiful, full-blossoming, and not moreself-conscious than the brier itself. I think now of the greens andcrimsons, the blaze of holy living colour in which we were able toexist and breathe. .. . The afternoon passed, the evening came. Lightunfolded silken banners of crimson floated down over the sky; crimsonflower torches danced upwards from Zenobia's hands, living rose glowedfrom out her cheeks. About us and around floated lambent reds andblues and greens. The deep lake looked into her eyes, the trees noddedto her, birds flew over her, the first stars peeped at her. 

Mysterious, breathless, was the summer night. An influence of the timeseemed to press upon us; something exhaled from the mystery of flowersdrew sleep down upon us. Twilight lay upon the eyebrows of the girl, and the cloud of her dark hair nodded over it like the oncoming night. We sat down upon a grass mound. We ourselves, Nature around us, allthings of the day, seemed under a spell. Sleep lay about the roses, the bushes mused inwardly, the honeysuckle exhaled enchantment and wasitself enchanted. Then the things of the night came. The myriad midgesperformed their rites over the blackthorn and the oak, and blackthornand oak looked as if changed into stone. The mice and the shrewscrept safely over the toes of the blackberry bushes, the rabbits cametumbling along through banks of inanimate grass. And fat night-mothssucked honey from half-conscious flowers, and the same moths whirredduskily round our gathered roses or darted daringly into our faces. Wewere like the flowers and the grass and the blackberry and blackthorn. The night which had overtaken them and put them to sleep had settledupon us also, and the things of the night came out securely at ourfeet. For a moment, a sport of habit had betrayed us to the old Edenhabits, had taken us a step into a forgotten harmony. But below thesurface the old fought secretly with the new, that old that seems somuch the newest of the new, that new that really is so old andstale. The new must have won, and in me first, for I rose suddenly, brusquely, as if somehow I felt I had unawares been actingunaccountably foolishly. I looked at my companion; the mood was stillupon her, and I believe she might easily have slumbered on into thenight, but as she saw me rise, the new in her gained reinforcement, and she too rose in a sort of mild surprise. Now I think I might haveleft her there to awaken late in the night, a new Titania with themoonbeams coming through the forest branches to her. 

I awakened her. I think she has often been awakened since then, butindeed it is seldom now that she is allowed to slip into such slumber. We walked home and I said some poems on the way; she heard. I thinkshe heard in the same way as a flower feels the touch of a bee. Nowords had she, no poetry of words to give back. She had not awakenedto articulateness. She had no thoughts; she breathed out beauty. Sheunderstood no thoughts; she breathed in beauty from around. 

 * * * * *

This was Zenobia, this was her aspect when she was taken, when thechange came over her life. 

That marvellous mechanism, the modern state, with its mysterioussprings and subterranean attractions and exigencies, drew her in toitself. The modern state, whose every agent is called Necessity, hadappealed to her. And she had been taken. She settled on the outskirtsof a city and half her life was spent under a canopy of smoke, whilstin the other half she courted morning and evening twilights. In thefirst June of this time, in afternoons and evenings, we had livedtogether among the roses, and she had stood at the zenith of herglory. But with the coming on of autumn the roses withered, andsomething of the old dreaminess left her eyes. A little melancholysettled upon her, and she discovered she was lonely. But the town hadseen her, and henceforth the town took charge of her. It sent itsangels to her. One might wonder what the town used her for, thisinarticulate one--it made her a teacher because of her good memory. Then it regarded her as "good material. " It sent its angels, thosevoluntary servants of the state, the acquaintances who call themselvesfriends. These at first approved of her, always misunderstood her, andat length despised her. They misunderstood her, because a person trulyinarticulate was incomprehensible to them. Her naïveté they mistookfor insolence, her dreaminess for disrespect. They confused her memorywith her understanding. They gave her books to read, brought her tolectures, sat her at the theatre, took her to hear sermons, prayedwith her and drank with her the holy wine. And some would say, "Isn't she coming on?" or "Isn't she developing?" and others, moreperceiving, would say, "Well, even if she isn't getting anything fromit, at least she's seeing life"; while others, more perceiving still, gave her up as past hope. "She has no brains, " they said. Others, still more perceiving, said she had no soul, no love; she cared for noone, understood nothing. She, for her part, went on almost as ever, and remained next to inarticulate. Only now and again the hubbub ofbattle in the schoolroom would awaken her to some sort of consciousexasperation. She would appeal to her class, staring at them with eyesfrom which all gentleness and affection had merged into astonishmentand indignation. For the rest, lack of life, lack of sun, lack of lifeinfluence told upon her beauty. She did not understand the influenceof the ill-constituted around her, and did not understand the painwhich now and again thrilled through her being, provoking sighs andword-sighs. Then those friend-acquaintances, ever on the alert for anexpression of real meaning, interpreted her sighs and longings forweek-ends in the country. 

Verily it is true, one cannot serve God and mammon. There was nohealth forthcoming through this compromise with life. She merely feltmore pain. She continued her work in the town, and was enrolled andfixed in many little circles where little wheels moved greater wheelsin the great state-machine. Ostensibly, always now, whatever new shedid was a step toward saving her soul. I met her one January night;she was going to a tea-meeting in connection with a literary society. Very grey her face looked. Many of the old beautiful curves weregone, and mysteries about her dimples and black hair-clusters seemeddeparted irrevocably. Still much in her slept safe, untouched as ever, and, as ever, she was without thoughts. Her memory suggested what sheshould say to me. "It will be interesting, " she remembered. I helpedher off with coat and furs. She was dressed wonderfully. The gown shewore--of deep cinnamon and gold--was still the dress of Zenobia, andat her bosom the strange flower exhaled its mystery. I went in withher to the hot room. She was evidently a queen here, as in theforest glades. And her pale face lit up as she moved about among the"little-worldlings" and exchanged small-talk and cakes and tea. Shewas evidently in some way responsible for the entertainment, for thechairman said "they all owed her so much. " I watched her face, itshowed no sign of unusual gratification; had he slighted her, I amsure she would have listened as equably. What a mask her face was! Thelook of graciousness was permanent, and probably only to me did shebetray her continuous sleepiness and lack of interest in the wholeaffair. Members propounded stupendously solemn questions about the"salvation of man, " the "state of progress, " the mystic meaning ofpassages of the Bible, and the like; and I watched her draw on hermemory for answers. She was never at a loss, and her interlocutorswent away, and named their little child-thoughts after her. 

I took her away at last and whispered some things in her ears, andshowed her what could be seen of moon and stars from the narrowstreet, and something of the old summer feeling came over us. How theold time sang sorrowfully back, plaintively, piteously. Our stepssounded along some silent streets, the doors of the little houses wereshut and dark. They might have been the under doors of tombs. Silentlywe walked along together, and life sang its little song to us from thedepths of its prison. It sounded like the voice of a lover now lostfor ever, one worth more beyond compare than any that could comeafter. 

There is no going back. I saw her to her little home and touched hertenderly at Goodbye. 

She went in. The door closed and I was left standing alone in frontof the closed door, and there was none around but myself. Then I wasaware of a gust in the night-breeze blowing up for rain. Time hadchanged. Something had been taken from the future and something hadbeen added to the past. The spiral gusts lifted the unseen litter ofthe street, and with them the harpies rose in my breast. And wordsimpetuous would have burst out like the torrents of rain which thedark sky threatened. 

The torrent came. 

A girl like this simply grows like a flower on a heath, blossoms, fades, withers, and is lost. No more than that. I scarcely tell whatI want to say. Oh, how strongly I would whisper it into the inmostheart! Life is not thoughts, is not calm, is not sights, is notreading or music, is not the refinement of the senses, --Life is--life. This is the great secret. This is the original truth, and if we hadnever begun to think, we should never have lost our instinctiveknowledge. In one place flowers rot and die; in another, bloom andlive. The truth is that in this city they rot and die. This is not asuitable place for a strong life; men and women here are too closetogether, there is not enough room for them, they just spring upthinly and miserably, and can reach no maturity, and therefore witheraway. All around are the ill-constituted, the decaying, the dying. What chance had fresh life coming into the tainted air of thisstricken city--this city where provision is made only for theunhealthy? For here, because something is the matter, every one hasbegun conscience-dissecting--thinking--and a rumour has got abroadthat we live to get thoughts of God. And because thoughts of Godare novel and comforting, they have been raised up as the greatdesideratum. And the state of society responsible for the productionof these thoughts is considered blessed. The work of intensifying thecharacteristics of that society is thought blessed, and because inease we think not, we prefer to live in disease. And the progress ofdisease we call Progress. So Progress and Thought are substituted forLife. 

There _is_ a purpose of God in this city, but there is as much purposein the desert. There is no astonishingly great purpose. The diseasewill work itself out. And I know God's whole truth to man was revealedlong since, and any one of calm soul may know it. The hope of learningthe purpose through the ages, the following of the gleam, is thepreoccupation of the insane. 

What do all these people and this black city want to make of _her_?She, and ten thousand like her, need life. Life, not thought, orprogress, just the same old human life that has always been going on. 

The rain was pouring heavily and I took shelter. I felt calmer; I hadunpacked myself of words. Rather mournfully I now looked out into thenight, and, as it were, ceased to speak to it, and became a listener. A song of sorrow came from the city, the wailing of mothersuncomforted, of children orphaned, uncared for, of forsaken ones. Iheard again the old reproach of the children sitting in the market. "Here surely, " I said, "where so many are gathered together, thereis more solitude and lonely grief than in all the wide places of theearth!" Voices came up to me from thousands in a city where thousandsof hands were uplifted to take a cup of comfort that cannot bevouchsafed. 

Is there a way out for _her_? Is there a way out for them? "For herperhaps, for them not, " something whispered within me inexorably. "AndDeath?" The wind caught up the whisper "death" caressingly and tookit away from me over the city, and wove it in and out through all thestreets and all the dark lanes, and about the little chimneys, and thewindows. 

Is there a way out for her?--Perhaps. There are some beings so full oflife that even the glutton Death must disgorge them. 

III

THE LITTLE DEAD CHILD

In the little town of Gagri on the Caucasian shore of the Black Seathere is a beautiful and wonderful church surviving from the sixthcentury, a work of pristine Christianity. It is but the size of acottage, and just the shape of a child's Noah's Ark, but made ofgreat rough-hewn blocks of grey stone. One comes upon the buildingunexpectedly. After looking at Gagri's ancient ruins, her fortresses, her wall built by Mithridates, one sees suddenly in a shadowy closesix sorrowful little cypresses standing absolutely still--like heavilydressed guardsmen--and behind the cypresses and their dark greenbrooms, the grey wall of the church, solid, eternal. One's eyes restupon it as upon a perfect resting-place. If Gagri has an organic life, this church must be its beating heart. 

I came to Gagri one Saturday afternoon after the first two hundred andfifty miles tramping of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and at this littlechurch I witnessed a strange sight. I had hardly admired the greyinterior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, themassive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures, when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying aflower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of childrencarrying candles--a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child'sfuneral. 

Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of beingalmost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church twotrestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in thecoffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate whitegarments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and evenmarvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything morebeautiful, and at the same time more terrible. 

A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with herhead somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar andat the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroideredbonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper _riza_ with delicateline drawings of the story of the girl's angel, St. Olga. A highlighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, andtwo at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bitsof pink ribbon; the child's hands, small, white, all lovely, lay oneupon another, and in one of them was a little white cross. The faceand arms were the colour of fine grey wax, the lips thin, dark red andset--the little dead girl looked steadfastly at the Ikons. 

I stood and wondered. Round about the coffin were a score of people, mostly little children, who every now and then nicked away flies thatwere about to settle on the dead body. The grey church and its beautymelted away. There was only a little grey wax figure lying poisedbefore the face of Christ, and little children flicking away flies. 

Among the flowers in the coffin I noticed a heavy metal cross--itwould be buried with her. Hanging over the trestles at each of thefour corners were gorgeous hand-embroidered towels. "This is some richperson's child, " I thought as I waited--it was twenty minutes beforethe father, the mother, and the priest arrived. I was mistaken; thiswas the child of ordinary peasants. 

 * * * * *

I wonder the mother was allowed to come to church; she was franticwith grief. When she came into the church she fell down on her kneesand hugged the dead body and kissed it and sobbed--sobbed so horriblythat except for the children there was no one present who kept dryeyes. The husband stood with his hands dangling at his side, his lipsall puckered, his hair awry, and the tears streaming down his redcheeks. 

But when the priest came in he took the good woman aside and quietedher, and in his words surely was comfort. "Those who die as childrenare assured of that glorious life above, for of them Christ said, 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, _forof such is the kingdom of heaven. _' Least of all should we grieve whena child dies. "

I held a candle with the others and joined in the little service, andwhen the service was over ate of the boiled rice and grapes that werehanded round to save us from evil spirits. 

The candles were put out, the priest retired, and then the sobbingbroke forth once more, the people crowded round the coffin and one byone kissed the little dead one, kissed her again and again. Most ofall the little children kissed her, and the father in distractionstood by, calling out in broken treble, "Say good-bye to her, children, say good-bye!"

Last of all, the wild mother said good-bye, and was only taken awayby sheer force. Then the lid was put on the coffin, and the fourgirls--they were each about twelve years old--lifted it on theembroidered towels and carried it out of the church. 

The mother fainted and was taken into the open air, where one womanhelped to revive her by pouring water on her head out of an oldkettle, and another by drinking water and spurting it out again inher face. Meanwhile the father took eight nails--he had them in hispocket--and with all the crowd looking on, he nailed down the lid ofthe coffin. The girls once more lifted their burden upon the beautifultowels, and they bore it away to the grave. The crowd followed themwith hymns--

 All we like dust go down into the grave, the sound of their singing almost drowned by the beating of theiruneven steps. The music modulated and died away to the silence of theevening. The little church remained grey and ancient, and the sixcypresses stood unmoved, unmoving, like guards before some sacredportal. .. . 

And the pilgrim goes on his way. 

IV

HOW THE OLD PILGRIM REACHED BETHLEHEM

At New Athos monastery in one of the common hostels there were somehundred peasant men and women, mostly pilgrims. It was after supper;some of the company were melting away to the dormitories, othersremained talking. 

There was one topic of conversation common to all. An old greybeardpalmer had broken down that afternoon and died. He had been almost hiswhole life on the road to Jerusalem, and we all felt sad to think thathe had been cut off when he was truly nearing the Holy Land. 

"He wished to go since he was a little boy, " said old Jeremy, an agedpilgrim in a faded crimson shirt. Every one paid respect to Jeremy andlistened to him. He was a placid greybeard who had spent all his lifeupon the road, full of wisdom, gentle as a little child, and veryfrail. 

"He wished to go when he was a little boy--that means he began to gowhen he was a little boy, for whenever you begin to wish you begin thepilgrimage. After that, no matter where you are, you are sure to be onthe way. Up in the north the rivers flow under the earth, and no onesees them. But suddenly the river appears above the land, and thepeople cry out, 'See, the river is flowing to the sea. ' But it beganto go to the sea long ago. So it was with Mikhail. All his life he wasa pilgrim. He lived in a distant land. He was born of poor parents, not here, but far away in the Petchora province--oh, far, far away. "

Grandfather Jeremy waved his hand to signify how far. 

"Four thousand versts at least, and he hasn't come straight by a longway. Most of the way he walked, and sometimes he got a lift, sometimesa big lift that took him on a long way. "

"Ah, ah!" said a youngster sympathetically, "and all in vain, all invain--_naprasno, naprasno_--"

Jeremy paid no attention. 

"Big lifts, " his voice quavered. "And now he is there. Yes, now he isthere. "

"Where, grandfather?"

"There, where he wished to be, in the Holy City. He had got verytired, and God had mercy on him. God gave him his last lift. He isthere now, long before us. "

"I don't see how you make that out, " said a young man, a visitor, nota pilgrim. "God, I reckon, cheated him. "

"God never cheats, " said Jeremy calmly. 

"God. .. " said the visitor, and was about to raise a discussion andtry to convert these pilgrims from their superstition. But Jeremyinterrupted him. For the old man, though a peasant, had a singulardignity. 

"Hush! Pronounce not His name lightly. I will tell you a story. "

"Silence now!" cried several. "Hear grandfather's story!"

The old man then told the story of an aged pilgrim who had died on hisway to Jerusalem. I thought he was repeating the story of the life ofMikhail, so like were his present words to those that had gone before. But the issue was different. In this case the pilgrim died and wasburied in a little village near Odessa. 

He was a penniless beggar. In grandfather's picturesque language, "hehad no money; instead of which he bore the reproach of Christ. Hefound other men's charity. .. . 

"All his life he wandered towards Bethlehem. He used to say hepilgrimaged not towards Calvary, but towards Bethlehem. The thoughtthat the Roman officials had treated Christ as a thief was too muchfor him to bear. 

"He who possessed all things they treated as one who had stolen alittle thing. .. . "

The old man paused at this digression, and stared around him with anexpression of terror and stupefaction. 

There was a silence. 

"Go on, Jeremy, " said some one impatiently. 

Jeremy proceeded. 

"He always journeyed towards Bethlehem, and whenever he saw a littlechild, a little baby, he would say to the mother that it foretold himwhat it would be like for him at the Holy Land. And of the cradles hewould always say they were just the shape of the manger where the babyChrist was laid. 

"He was very dear to mothers, you may be sure, and he never lackedtheir blessing. 

"He travelled very slowly, for in Moscow a motor-car ran over hisfoot, and he always needed a strong staff. He was ill-treatedsometimes in the towns, where the dogs bit him and the street childrenaimed stones. But he never took offence. He smiled, and thought howlittle his sufferings had been compared with those of the saints. 

"So he grew old. 

"'You are old, grandfather; you will never reach Jerusalem, ' thepeasant women told him. But he always smiled and said, 'As God wills. Perhaps if I die I shall see it sooner. '

"And he died, poor, wretched, uncared for, in the streets of a littlevillage near Odessa, and children came and beat off the hungry dogsfrom his body with sticks. 

"'What is this?' said one policeman to another. 

"'A _Bogo-moletz_ (God-prayer) dead, that's all, ' was the reply. 

"'No money?'

"'None. If he had any his pockets have been picked. '

"By his passport he belonged to Petchora province, far away. No oneknew him. No one claimed him. 

"'It means he must be buried at the public expense, ' said the head manof the village, and spat upon the ground. 

"In the whole village only the coffin maker rejoiced, and he had smallcause, since a pauper's coffin costs but a shilling. 

"'He must be buried on the common, ' said the head man. 'There's noroom in the churchyard. '

"'But a pilgrim, ' said an objector. 'You must bury him in consecratedground; you can't shut him out of the Heavenly Kingdom. '

"'No matter. Ask the priest. If the dead man can pay for a plotof ground for a grave, well and good; or if the villagers willsubscribe. .. . '

"The head man looked at the little crowd assembled. They were a poorand needy crowd. No one answered him. Then, without doing any more, the head man walked away, and the dead body remained in the street. 

"It seemed no one would pay for the grave, but in the afternoon awoman who lived on the outskirts came and claimed the pilgrim as adistant relative. He could scarcely have been a relative, exceptinasmuch as we are all descended from Adam. 

"The head man and the village priest rejoiced, and the woman took thedead body home and washed it, and clothed it in white linen, and sheordered a three-rouble coffin covered with purple cloth. 

"But she was a very poor woman, and when she had paid for the graveshe had no money to pay for singers and for prayers. 

"'God will have mercy, ' she said. 'And belike he was a good man, apilgrim. '

"And that woman was a virgin, " added Jeremy abruptly and, as Ithought, irrelevantly. But the chambers of that old man's mind werestrangely furnished. 

"She was a virgin. What remains to be said? She hired a man to dig agrave, and another to wheel the barrow with the coffin. She had nofriends who would follow the coffin with her, but in the main streetshe found a cripple whom she had once befriended, and two little boyswho liked to sing the funeral chant. 

"Thus the old pilgrim was taken to the grave, and in his honour asimple woman, two street children, and a cripple followed his corse. "

 * * * * *

There was a long pause. 

"You think he died, " old Jeremy went on. "Oh, no; he did not die, heonly went on more quickly. When he fell down dead in the street hissoul suddenly began a new life, a life like a dream. Whilst the dogswere barking and snapping at his old legs he suddenly saw in front ofhim in the darkness a great bright star beckoning him, and in his newlife he got up from the road and rushed towards that star--rushed, forhe felt young again, younger than any boy, and all the lameness andtiredness were passed away. 

"Suddenly, in front of him, and coming to meet him, he saw a horse, draped all in silk, and attendants. A man came up to him and salutedhim, offered him a crown, and bade him rise up upon the horse. He satupon the horse, and, looking at himself, saw that he was dressed incloth of gold. Behind him was a great train of attendants, carryinggifts. And they all journeyed forward, towards the star. 

"Eh, brothers, " said Jeremy, looking round, "what a change in theestate of our poor friend! He has now become one of the first, becauseon earth he was one of the last. He is a king. "

The listeners were all silent, and the narrator enjoyed a triumph. 

 * * * * *

Jeremy's cracked old voice went on, and now again somewhatirrelevantly. "And the woman, who was a virgin, conceived and bore achild, and she was so poor that the child was laid in a manger. Andthree kings arrived, bearing precious gifts, and they did homageunto the child. It was at Bethlehem. One of these kings was the poorpilgrim who died on his way to the Holy Land. "

"What woman was this?" said the visitor contemptuously. "Your wits arewandering, old man. Do you mean it was the same woman who buried him?"

"The same, " said Jeremy huskily, "only in a different world. There areother worlds, you know. But it is very true. He came as one of thekings. And the woman now has a beautiful child. She knows. .. . So weshan't be very sad about Mikhail. I think he also to-day is followingthat star, and will be at Bethlehem to-night. "

"Only it doesn't happen to be Christmas Eve, " said the scepticalvisitor. 

"Eh, hey, " said another pilgrim, breaking in, "there's a man--hedoesn't know that it is Christmas every day in the year at Bethlehem. "

IV

THE WANDERER'S STORY

I. MY COMPANION

When star passes star once in a thousand years, or perhaps once in theforever, and does not meet again, what a tale has each to tell! Sowith tramps and wanderers when two meet upon the road, what a taleof life is due from one to the other. Many tramps have I met in theworld. Far from the West I have met those who came far from the East, and men have passed me coming from the South, and men from the North. And sometimes men have suddenly appeared on my way as if they hadfallen from the sky, or as if they had started up out of the earth. 

One morning when I was dwelling in a cave between a mountain and ariver I met him who tells this story. Probably the reader has neverlived in a cave and does not appreciate cave life--the crawling in atnight, the long and gentle sleep on the soft grey sand, the crawlingout again at morning, the washing in the river, the stick-collectingand kettle-boiling, the berry-gathering, the lazy hours of noon, thelying outstretched on the springy turf, sun-drinking, the wading inthe river and the plashing of the rushing water over one's legs; sunnydays, grey days, rainy days, the joyous delight in the beautifulworld, the exploration of one's own heart, the sadness ofself-absorption. 

It was on a grey day when I met the strange tramp whose life-mysteryis here told. I came upon him on a quiet forenoon, and was surprisedby him. He came, as it were, out of thin air. I had been looking atthe river with eyes that saw not--I was exploring my own heart and itsmemories--when suddenly I turned round and saw him, smiling, with agreeting on his countenance. 

It was long since I had looked upon a man; for though quite near thehighway, no one had found me out in my snug cave. I was like a birdthat had built a nest within earshot of a road along which manyschoolboys ran. And any one discovering my little house was like tosay, "Fancy, so near to the road, so unsuspected!"

"Good-morning, friend, " said I, "and greeting! You are the first whohas found his way to this cave. You are a wanderer like myself, Iperceive. Come, then, and share my noonday solitude, and in returngive me what you have to share. "

"Forgive me, " said he, "I thought I heard a voice; that was why Icame. I thought I heard a call, a cry. "

I looked at him. He was a strange man, but with something peculiarlyfamiliar in his figure. His dark hair spread over a brow whiter thanmine, and veiled two deep and gentle eyes; and his sun-tanned face anddusty hat made him look like a face such as one sometimes sees in adream. 

"You heard not me, " I answered, "unless it was my thoughts that youheard. "

He smiled. I felt we need not say more. I sat with my back to the sunand he lay stretched in front of me, and thus we conversed; thus twowanderers conversed, two like spirits whose paths had crossed. 

"Now tell me, " said I, "who you are, dear wanderer, stretched out atmy feet like a shadow, and like a shadow of my own life. How long haveyou been upon the road, when did you set out, where is your home andwhy did you leave it?"

The tramp smiled. 

"I am a wanderer and a seeker, " he replied. "In one sense the wholeworld is my home, in that I know all its roads and am nowhere astranger. In another sense I have no home, for I know not where Ibegan or where I come from. I do not belong to this world. "

"What!" said I, starting up suddenly and consequently disturbing mycompanion. "You are then an apparition, a dream-face, a shadow. Youcame out of thin air!"

I stood up, and he turned familiarly about me and whispered like anecho in my ear, "Out of thin air. " And he laughed. 

"And you?" he went on. "On what star did you begin? Can _you_ tell me?Never yet have I found a man who could answer that question. But wedo not know, because we cannot remember. My conscious life began oneevening long ago when I stepped out of a coach on to a high road, this same road by which you have your cave. I had come fromGod-knows-where. I went backward, I came forward; I went all about andround about, and never found my kith and kin. I was absorbed into theworld of men and shared its illusions, lived in cities, worked forcauses, worshipped idols. But thanks to the bright wise sun I alwaysescaped from those 'gloomy agreeable nooks. ' It has now become myreligion to avoid the town, the places where men make little homeswhich make us forget that in truth we have no homes. I have learned todo without the town, without the great machine that provides man witha _living. _ I have sucked in a thousand rains, and absorbed a thousandsuns, lain on many thousand banks of the earth. I have walked at thefoot of mountains along long green valleys, I have climbed greatranges and peeped over them, I have lived in barren and in fertileplaces, and my road-companion has been Nature herself. "

I smiled upon my visitor and said, "How like you are to me, my friend!Stay with me and let us talk awhile. Grey days come, and rain, and weshall live in this cave together and converse. In you I see a brotherman. In you as in a clear mirror I see the picture of my own soul, adarling shadow. Your songs shall be the words of my happiness, youryearning shall be the expression of my own aching heart. I shall breakbread with you and we shall bathe together in the river. I shall sleepwith you and wake with you, and be content to see you where'er Iturn. "

That evening at sunset he crawled with me into the cave. And he sleptso sweetly that I held him in my own heart. Next morning at sunrise weclambered out together, and together we gathered sticks, and togetherbent over the fire and blew into its struggling little flames. Lifewas rich. We hob-nobbed together. We doubled all our happinesses, andwe promised to share all our griefs. Sitting on the rocks--there weremany of them about, of all shape and size--we taught one anothersongs. I wrote songs; he sang them. I told him of places where I hadbeen; he described them to me so that they lived again before me. I told him of beauteous women I had met; he had met them also andrevealed to me their loving hearts. He could give the leaping lovein my heart a precious name. I verily believe that when the sun wassetting golden behind a great cliff, he could bid it stop and shineupon us an hour longer. 

Timid and shy at first, he grew more daring afterwards and interpretedmy wishes even before I was myself aware of them. He was constantlydevising some new happiness. His bird's heart was a fast overflowingfountain. 

Then when rainy days came we crouched together in the cave likenight-birds sheltered from the day, and we whispered and recountedand planned. I scribbled in my diary in pencil, and he re-wrote myscribbling in bright-coloured chalks, and drew side pictures and wrotepoems. Many are the pages we thus wrote together; some he wrote, someI wrote, and there are many from both of us in this volume. WhenI thought to make a book he laughed and said, "You are making toyourself a graven image. " He held it idolatry to imagine thatbeautiful visions could be represented in words. 

"I shall not worship the book, " I urged. 

"Other people may, or they may revile it, " he answered, laughing. "It's the same sin. "

"Lest they worship or revile idolatrously, I shall write a notice, "said I. "For though I praise Nature ill, and express her ill, she, thewonderful spirit, is beyond all praise or blame. " And I wrote thesewords: "_Lest any one should think that in these pages life itself isaccounted for, any beauty set down in words, any yearning defined, orsadness utterly plumbed, it is hereby notified that such appreciationis false--that in these pages lies only the symbol of life, theguide-post to the hearts of those who wrote the words. Follow, gentlereader, the directions we have given; tread the roads that we havetrod, and see again what we have seen. _"

To which I added this note: "_The poetry is from my companion's pen, the prose from mine. _"

And my companion, not content with that, wrote a postscript: "_Thereis no prose, and the pen by itself writes nothing at all. _"

II. HOW MY COMPANION FOUND HIMSELF IN A COACH

"There is one event in my life that I cannot account for, " saidmy companion, "and it has conditioned all my living, an eventpsychologically strange. I appear, in a way, to have lost my memory atone era of my existence. I look at the event I am going to relate, and simply stare in perplexed wonder. Somewhere, somewhen, I lostsomething in my mind! What was that something?

"Most people can tell the story of their life as they themselvesremember it. Their memory takes them back to their earliest years, andthe memory seems satisfactory to them. But there is a mystery in minewhich to my mind remains unexplained. I remember nothing before theage of twenty-one. As far as my memory is concerned I might have beenborn then. More strange still, I recognise nothing of a past beforethen, and no one comes out of that past and claims recognition of me. 

"This I remember in a dim phantasmal way as the very beginning ofthings: my getting into a coach in a white mist. Even in that Iconstantly feel a doubt that my imagination has been playing falsewith memory. Certainly I do remember finding myself in a coach, but atthe startled moment when my conscious life began, it appeared to methat I had never been anywhere in my life but sitting in the coach. Acertain intellectual _horror vacuum_ may have evoked that mental imageof an entering of the coach, but even then I wholly fail to fill inthe life and place from which I came. All behind that strange mistyentering on the coach-steps is grey, empty mist-land. 

"It was a large, smooth-rolling coach, most like a commodious omnibus, and full of a most jovial company. I sat half-way along one of the twolengthy seats, and opposite me was a red-faced man, with large shinyeyes and greasy hair. On one side of me was a jolly country girl ofabout twenty-five, on the other a thin, dry-looking man. There was anincessant din of conversation and singing; we were leaning towards oneanother, and saying what jolly fellows we were, we should never part. A bottle was always going round, and every now and then the postilionblew his horn; six horses clattered in front, the dust rolled offbehind. I remember myself in a strange state of excitement. 

"It was afternoon when I began to think. Actually, at that time I knewI had no memory, but I dared not face the fact. I strove to evadethought by being one of the company. How my cheeks burned as I laughedand talked! I remember pulling a fat man by the sleeve, and whisperingin his ear some secret that made us roll back and collapse inlaughter. And the coach sped on. 

"It seemed an eternal afternoon--chiefly because it filled up all thepast for me. I could remember nought before it. 

"At last, however, a grand sunset ran scarlet over the whole sky--westill jested, and it was at this time that a little dwarf-like man ina corner appeared fearful to me; there was a fiery reflection ofthe sunset in his eyes. I saw him once so, I dared not look again. Thoughts were fighting me. My jollity was losing ground. I foresawthat in a short time I should cease to belong to the company, that Ishould belong utterly to myself, and there would be no escaping frommy thoughts. Then at last we passed out of the sunlit country into aplace of grey light. It was really natural; the sunset was gone, herewas grey twilight. But my disordered mind expected I know not what, either eternal sunset or sudden black night; I cannot say now. I wasstruck with terror. And standing still with myself, I felt absolutelyconfounded by the self-question I asked. 

"'Where are we going?'

"Till that moment I had not realised that ignorance of the Past meantignorance of the Future. I asked where we were going. The laughter andconversation increased. I was answered, but in a jargon I found quiteincomprehensible. Another question. 

"'Who under heaven were these people?'

"I stood up and staggered. I must have appeared drunk, for I wasgreeted with howls and cheers, an inferno of cries and laughter; andthe red-faced man stood up also and clung to me, and brought his queerface close up to mine. The girl also clung to me. Then it occurred tome, this was the crisis of a nightmare; in a moment these phantasmalrestraints would burst, and I should find myself peacefully--where?

"I remember what seemed a prolonged struggle among laughter and sighsand affectionate clingings, and I got at last out at the door anddown the steps. I found myself weakly turning about on my heels on anexcessively dusty road. Just ahead of me the coach rolled off into thefuture stretches of the road, the postilion wound his horn, and theclouds of dust rose up behind the wheels. 

"And I was in an open place in the cool of evening. A grey-blue skyabove, with the faintest glitter of first stars! I was alone. The pastwas a mystery; my future unexplored, full of the unimaginable; theultimate future of course like my past. 

"Such was my beginning--the event of my life, in the shadow of which Ilive and by virtue of which, though I know every road and house of theworld, I yet am homeless. No happening in my being but I must view itin the light of that strange initial mystery. With the problem of thatpast unsolved, I have never found anything in the ordinary matters oflife proposed as all-absorbing occupations. Because of that, I am uponthe road. I have made research, and have asked questions of all whomI have met, but I got no answer, and I tired most people with myproblem. They say to me lightly, 'Your coach was a dream, ' and Ianswer, 'If so, then what before the dream? '"

"We are all of us like you and your coach, " I said to my companion. "Some of us know it and some do not, that is all. Some forget themystery and others remember it. "

"_We_ remember it, " said the wanderer. "Because of it we areirreconcilables, but . .. " he added, looking with a smile at thebeautiful world about our cave, "almost reconciled; inconsolable, yetseeing how lovely is this mysterious universe, almost consoled. Mostmen forget, but many remember; yet whether they remember or no, theyare all orphans nevertheless, lost children and homeless ones. We whosing and write and who remember are the voices of humanity. We speakfor millions who are voiceless. "

III. IRRECONCILABLES

One long sunny morning we talked of the life of the wanderer, andmy companion continued his story and recounted how he had found abrotherhood of men like himself. 

"When first I found myself thus upon the world, I was full of hope tofind an answer to the mystery. But the many fellow-beings I met uponmy road were as profitless as my companions in the coach. They couldnot explain me, they could not explain the world or themselves, andin the midst of teeming knowledges they were obliged to confess oneignorance; among the myriad objects which they could explain they hadto acknowledge a whole universe of the inexplicable. I said to them, 'What is all your knowing worth beside the terrible burden of yourignorance, and what are things that you can explain compared withthose that are inexplicable?'

"But I found these people proud of their little knowledges, and of thematters they could explain. They were not even startled when I calledupon them to remember the great volcano of ignorance, on the slopes ofwhich they were building their little palaces. 

"First I despised them, and then I loved them. But I shuddered at thethought that I, an unknown person, unknown to myself and unrecognisedby a God, should love people equally unknown--a shadow loved othershadows, and like a shadow I trembled. 

"When I learned to love, I felt like a god--just as when the sunlearned to warm, he knew that he was a sun. I became like a sun over alittle world, and people who did not understand basked in my light andheat. 

"But one day love was lost in a cloud, as the sun is lost in a mistwhich it itself has raised from the earth, and I thought: 'What afool am I, content to dwell among such people, and be as a king over_them_. All that divides me from them is that I know that I know not, and they do not even know that. For they rank their earth knowledge assomething more worthy than all their ignorance. I will go forth intothe world, and seek for those who are like myself, irreconcilable infront of the inexplicable. '

"I sought them in towns and found them not, for the people, likefoolish virgins forgetful of the bridegroom, slumbered and slept. Isought them upon deserts and mountains, and upon the wild plains, butthere man was of the earth and beautiful, though not aware of hiskingdom beyond the earth. But in the country places I met wise old menwho kept candles burning before my shrine, and in the houses of thepoor I met the body-wearied, world-defeated, and they, having lostall, found the one hope that I cherished. And in the pages of books, by converse with the dead, I found the great spiritual brotherhood. 

"We are many upon the world--we irreconcilables. We cry inconsolablylike lost children, 'Oh, ye Gods, have ye forgotten us? Oh, ye Gods, or servants of gods, who abandoned us here, remember us!'

"For perhaps we are kidnapped persons. Perhaps thrones lie vacant onsome stars because we are hidden away here upon the earth. I for onehave a royal seal on my bosom, a mysterious mark, the sign of a royalhouse. Ah, my brothers, we are all scions of that house. 

"One day I met a man who voluntarily sought death in order topenetrate the mystery of the beyond. But no sign showed itself forthto us, and we know not whether by his desperate deed he won what wehave lost, or whether, perchance, he lost all that we can ever win. 

"The burden of my ignorance is hard to bear, " he cried. The burden ofour ignorance is hard to bear. Thus we cry, but there comes no answer, and the eternal silence which enfolds the earth is unbroken. Yet thestars still shine, promising but not fulfilling. 

We have become star-gazers, we irreconcilables; expecters of signs andwonders. We live upon every ridge of the world, and have made of everymountain a watch-tower; and from the towers we strain our eyes to seepast the stars. 

For the stars are perchance but the flowers in a garden, or the lightsupon the walls of a garden, and beyond them is the palace of ourfathers. 

"And since the early days till now, " said my companion, "I havewandered about the world, sometimes sojourning a while in a town, butseldom for long. For the town is not a good place. "

Then I told him how the town had tempted me, and we comparedexperiences. We told of the times when we had come nigh forgetting. 

"Just think, " said I to him, "I should never have found you had I beenswallowed up in the town. "

"And I should never have lain at your feet in the sun, " he replied. "You would never have noticed me in the town. "

IV. "HOW THE TOWNSMAN TEMPTED ME"

"Once I was tempted by a townsman, " said the wanderer, "but instead ofconverting me with his town, he was himself converted by the country. 

"For many years I wandered by seashores, asking questions of the sea. When I came to the sea it was singing its melancholy song, the songthat it has sung from its birth, and it paused neither to hear nor toanswer me. Ever rolling, ever breaking, ever weeping, it continued itsindifferent labour. I walked along its far-stretching sands, leavingfootprints which it immediately effaced. I clambered upon its cliffsand sat looking out to sea for days, my eyes shining like lighthousefires. But the sea revealed not itself to me. Or perhaps it had noself to reveal. And I could not reveal myself to it; but the seaexpressed itself to me as a picture of my mystery. 

"I wandered inland to placid lakes, the looking-glasses of the clouds. I threw pebbles into their waters, disturbing their pure reflections, but the disturbances passed away harmlessly into nothingness, and thelakes once more reflected the sky. 

"Then I said to my heart, 'We must wander over all the world in searchof my homeland, but chance shall not be my guide. I shall loose thereins to thee. Where thou leadest I will follow. '

"I followed my heart through verdant valleys up into a mountain highabove a great town. And there for some while I made my abiding place. For I had learned that from a mountain I could see further than froma valley. In the towns my horizons had been all walls, but from thishigh mountain I looked far over the world. 

 * * * * *

"One day there came towards my mountain a townsman who tried to lureme to the city below. He was too tired to climb up to me, but from lowdown he called out, ' You unhappy one, come down out of the height andlive with us in the town. We have learnt the art of curing allsorrow. Let us teach you to forget it, and live among our many littlehappinesses. '

"And I answered him, 'It is our glory that we shall never forget. 'Nevertheless I was tempted and came down. 

"The townsman was exceedingly glad, and even before I reached thegates of his city he said to me, 'In after years you will remember meas the man who saved you. '

"'How?' said I. 'Am I already saved?'

"'No, ' he replied. 'But in the town is your salvation. You will findwork to do, and you will not need to return to your mountain to pray. You will understand that work itself is prayer--_laborare est orare_. Your prayer towards the sky was barren and profitless, but prayertowards the earth, _work_, will give full satisfaction to your soul. '

"And I mocked him. 

"'What lie is this?' I said. 'How do you dare to confuse labour andprayer? Learn from me, my friend, that work is work, and prayer isprayer. It is written in the old wisdom--"Six parts of thy time shaltthou work for thy bread, and on the seventh thou shalt pray. " _Orareest orare; laborare est laborare_. '

"On the outskirts of the town there were men paving the streets. 'Behold how these men pray!' exclaimed my companion. 'They pave thestreets; that is their prayer. They do not gaze at the stars; theireyes are ever on the earth, their home. They have forgotten that thereare any stars. They are happy!'

"'Their souls sleep, ' I answered him. 

"'Quite so, ' he replied, 'their souls sleep and thus they are happy. They had no use for their souls, therefore we purveyed them sleep, "balm of hurt minds. " We gave them narcotics. '

"'Tell me your narcotics. '

"'The Gospel of Progress--that is our opium; it gives deep sleep andsweet dreams. It is the most powerful of drugs. When a man takes itonce he takes it again, for it tempts him with the prospect of itsdreams. '

"'I shall not taste of it, ' said I, 'for I prize Truth above alldreams. What other narcotics have you, sleep-inducing?'

"My companion paused a moment, then replied:

"' There are two sovereign remedies for the relief of your sorrow, alife of work, or a life of pleasure. But work needs to be done underthe influence of the Gospel of Progress. Without a belief in progress, man cannot believe that work is prayer, and that God is a taskmaster. His soul wakes up. He commits suicide or crime. Or he deserts thecity, and goes, as you have done, up into the mountains. '

"'One narcotic helps out the other, ' I hazarded. 

"'Quite so. Pleasure is the alternative remedy, a perfectly delightfulsubstitute for your life: wine, the theatre, art, women. But as intaking laudanum, one must graduate the doses--take too much and youare poisoned--'

"'Wine, ' I said. 'I have heard of it. It has been praised by thepoets, and its service is that it makes one forget! The theatre, itscomedies and farces and cunning amusements all designed to help me toforget! Art with its seductions is to obsess the soul with foreignthoughts! Women who languish upon one's eyes and tempt with theirbeauties, they also would steal away our memories. I will have none ofthem. '

"'I spoke of women in general, ' said my tempter. 'But think of onewoman marvellously wrought for thee, the achiever and finisher ofthy being, the answer to all thy questionings, the object of all thyyearnings. In the town thou wilt find the woman for thee, and she willbear thee children. '

"'You misinterpret my needs, O friend of the town, ' I said. 'I do notlook to the stars to find a woman. My yearnings are not towards awoman of this earth. Well do I know that you have offered me the mostdeadly delusion in this woman, _perfectly wrought for my being_. Youhave taken hold of all my inexpressible yearning and have written overit the word _woman_. And when one of us irreconcilables marries, itoften happens that he forgets his loneliness and loses the sense ofhis mystery. His wife becomes a little house which he lives inside, and his soul is covered up and lost by her. Where he used to see theeternal stars, he sees a woman, and as he understands her, he thinkshe understands himself. "

"'But consider, ' proceeded my tempter, 'the woman who is exactly thecomplement of yourself, a woman marvellously and uniquely fashionedto round you off and supply your deficiencies, and use yoursuperfluities. '

"'If such there be, ' I replied, 'I shall not seek her in the town. I know what you mean. I ought to make a home and rear up the secondgeneration. I ought to renounce my own future and dedicate myself to achild so that the mistakes in the old may be set right in the new. Imust try to put a child on the road that I missed when I myself was achild, put it in the old coach, perhaps, with a passport in its hand. Even so, that solves no problem, rather multiplies my own problem. What is deathless in man is not answered in that way. What does itprofit man that mankind goes on? We cannot tell. But it is clear thatwe learn nothing new thereby. Rather, as it seems, we forget what wehave learned. '

"My friend smiled and said, 'You will think differently later. 'Meanwhile he brought me into the heart of his town, a great city ofidolaters and opium-eaters. And he took me to the gaming tables ofpleasure and the gaming tables of work, and he sought to enchant mewith figures and hypnotise me with the gleam of gold. He showed me howfortunes were made in roulette and in commerce, and tried to bringupon me the gambler's madness. And I smiled and said:

"'Behold the eyes of yonder gambler; his soul is asphyxied with gold. He pays that homage to the base gleam of a metal that I do to thelight of the stars. He is an idolater. '

"In the centre of the city a terrible fear troubled my soul, for itrealised that it alone in all this great city of souls preservedits conscience and its wakefulness. By the glare of men's eyes itunderstood how all were somnambulists. We walked among millions whowalked in their sleep. And in their sleep they committed terriblecrimes. They looked at me with eyes that saw not; at the bidding ofstrange dreams they went forward secretly. 

"I beheld the thousand mockeries, and chief among them the mockery ofour eternal mystery. Instead of the church that is the dome of heavenitself they had built churches of stone. And the people, urged bytheir dreams, congregated themselves in these churches and wereministered unto by false priests. And dreams of truth conflicted withnightmare enacted themselves. The churches fell out among themselves, and the people fought one another. False priests stood by irresolute, their soft, shapeless lips having been smoothed away by maxims and oldwords. And they stood in front of idols in a semblance of defence. 

"I pushed many priests aside; I thrust my sword through many idols. 

"'Come, ' I said, 'your town is terrible. Let me away into my mountainagain. You wish me to consider this world worthy of me; you offer meits small things in exchange for my great thing. You have not evensmall things to offer. Farewell!'

"'And what is your doctrine?' he said to me at parting. As if we had adoctrine!

"'For you, ' I said, 'the worship of the explained; for us theremembrance of the inexplicable. '"

V. HIS CONVERSION

"'But your religion?' said the townsman. 'You spoke of your religion. What do you mean by religion?'

"'Religion is to have charity: never to condemn, never to despair, never to believe that the finite can ever quite cover up the infinite, never to believe that anything is wholly explained, to see theinexplicable in all things, and to remember that words are idols andjudgments are blasphemies. For words are the naming of things that arewithout name, and judgments are the limiting of the wonder of God. And what we call God is the inexplicable, the indefinable, the greatUnknown to whom in the midst of the idolatry of Athens an altar wasonce erected. '

"'As a child I learnt that God was He who made the world in six days, 'said the townsman. 'God was He who delivered unto Moses the tencommandments. Is not this the same which you profess?'

"'The same, ' I answered. 'But you worship Him idolatrously. You limitthe wonder of God by words. You limit God's fruitfulness to six days:and you say the world is finished and made. But for us the world isnever finished; every spring is a new creation, every day God adds ortakes away. And you limit God's laws to ten: you limit the EverlastingWisdom to ten words. Words are your idols, the bricks out of whichyour idols and oracles are built. Listen, I will tell you what I havealways found in towns. I have found words worshipped as something holyin themselves. Words were used to limit God, debase man. So is it inyour town. Once man thought words; now words are beginning to thinkman. Once man conceived future progress; now your idol Progress isbeginning to conceive future man. It is the same as with money; onceman made money, but now in your idolatry money makes the man. Once manentered commerce that he might have more life; now he enters life thathe may have more commerce. Of women, the very vessels and temples ofhuman life, you have made clerks; of priestesses unto the Living Godyou have made vestals of the dead gold calf. You have insulted thedignity of man. '

"I waited, but the townsman was silent. 

"'Is that not so?' I urged. 

"'You have your point of view; we have ours. You have your religionand we ours, ' said the townsman obstinately. 'And _you_ use words, doyou not? You have your terminology; you have your idols, just as wehave. If not, then how do you use your words?'

"Then I answered him: 'When I found myself upon the world I soon cameunder the sway of your words. Progress tempted me; commerce promisedme happiness. I obeyed commandments and moral precepts, and eagerlyswallowed rules of life. I prostrated myself before the great highpublic idols, I bowed to the little household gods, and cherisheddearly your little proverb-idols and maxim-idols. The advice ofPolonius to his son and such literature was to me the ancient wisdom. I became an idolater, and my body a temple of idolatry. '

"'How then did you escape?' asked my companion. 

"'In this wise, ' I answered. 'In my temple, as in ancient Athens, inthe midst of the idols was an altar to the Unknown God, which altarfrom the first was present. That altar was to the mystery and beautyof life. 

"'By virtue of this altar I discovered my idolatry, and I recognisedthe forces of death to which I had bound myself. I broke away andescaped, and in place of all my idols I substituted my aspiring humanheart, and it beat like a sacred presence in the clear temple of mybeing. 

"'Then words I degraded from their fame, and trampling them under myfeet, I sang triumphantly to the limitless sky. '

"'But still you use words, ' said the townsman, 'you irreconcilables. '

"'Yes. When we had degraded their fame and humbled them so that theycame to us fawningly, asking to be used, we exalted them to be ourservants. Now we are masters over them, and not they over us. They arecontent to be used, if but for a moment, and then forgotten for ever. We use them to reproduce in other minds the thoughts that are in ourown. Woe if they ever get out of hand and become our masters again!They are our exchange metals. Woe if ever again we melt down thosemetals and recast them as idols!

"'Come with me into the country, ' I urged; and the townsman, as ifforeseeing release from the bondage of his soul, allowed my flowinglife to float him away from the haunts of his idolatry. Then as wepassed from under the canopy of smoke and entered into the brightoutside universe, I went on:

"'Words are become but a small part of our language. We converse inmore ways and with more people than of yore. All nature speaks to us;mountain and sea, river and plain, valley and forest; and we revealour hearts to them, our longing, our hope, our happiness. And yetnever entirely reveal. Not with words only do we converse, but withpictures, with music, with scent, with . .. But words cannot name thesacred nameless mediums. And man speaks to man without words; with hiseyes, with his hands, with his love. .. . "

"With that we walked some way together silently till at last thetownsman put his arm in mine and said: 'In my temple also is an altarwith an effaced inscription, methinks to the Ever-Living God. By yourwords you have revealed it to me. Let me accompany you into the beautyof the world, and interpret thou to me the mystery of its beauty. '

"As if I could interpret!

"'Behold, ' I said, 'forest and mountain, the little copse and thegrass under it, and delicate little flowers among the grass. List tothe lark's song in the heavens, the wind soughing in the trees, thewhispering of the leaves. In the air there is a mysterious incensespread from God's censers, the very language of mystery. Now you seefar into the beauty of the world and hear tidings from afar. All thehorizons of your senses have been extended. Are you not glad forall these impressions, these pictures and songs and perfumes? Everyimpression is a shrine, where you may kneel to God. '

"'It is a beautiful world, ' said he. 

"'It is beautiful in all its parts and beautiful every moment, ' Ireplied. 'My soul constantly says "_Yes_" to it. Its beauty is thereminder of our immortal essence. The town is dangerous in that it haslittle beauty. It causes us to forget. It is exploring the illusionof trade, and its whole song is of trade. If you understand this, youhave a criterion for Life--

"'_The sacred is that which reminds us; the secular is that which bidsus forget_. 

"'When you have impressions of sight, noise, and smell, and theseimpressions have no shrine where one may kneel to God, it is a suresign that you have forgotten Him, that you are dwelling in the courtsof idols. '

"'But it is painful to remember, ' said my companion, 'and even now Ihave great pain. It is hard to leave the old, and painful to receivethe new. My heart begins to ache for loneliness, and I long for thegaiety of the town and its diversions. I should like once more todrown my remembrances. '

"I bade him have courage, for he was in the pains of birth. The oldnever lets out the new without pain and struggle, but when the newis born it is infinitely worthy. And my new friend was comforted. Wespent many days upon the road, looking at beauty, conversing with oneanother, worshipping and marvelling. Along the country paths flowerslooked up, and beautiful suns looked out of strange skies. Oftenit seemed we had been together upon the same road a thousand yearsbefore. Was it a remembrance of the time before my entering into thecoach? The flowers by the roadside tried to whisper a word of theanswer to my question. It seemed that we were surrounded by mysteriesjust about to reveal themselves. Or, anon, it seemed as if we hadmissed our chance, as if an unseen procession had just filed by and wehad not distinguished it. 

"My friend was leaving behind all his idols. We sat upon a ridgetogether, and looked back upon the valley and the city which we hadleft. There was what my soul abhorred, and what I feared his soulmight be too weak to face--the kaleidoscope of mean colours turningin the city, tickling our senses, striving to bind our souls and tomesmerise. Some colours would have drawn our tears, some would havepersuaded smiles over our lips. Combinations of colours, groupings, subtle movements and shapings sought to interest and absorb ourintellects. 

"'Behold, ' said I. 'In the city which calls itself the world, thetownsmen are casting up dice! Is it possible we shall be stricken withwoe, or immensely uplifted in joy because of the falling of a die? Ohworld too sordid to be opposed to us! Oh world too poor to be used byus! Is not the world's place under our feet, for it is of earth and weof spirit?'

"But my friend was not with me. He wavered as if intoxicated, andwished to return to the city. 'Oh glorious world, ' said he, and sighedhimself towards the gates we had left. 

"Then seeing the brightness of my face, which just then reflected agreat brightness in the sky, and remembering that his pain was only abridge into the new, he gained possession of himself and turned hiseyes away from the town. 

"'More than my old self and its weak flesh do I value the new younglife that is to be, ' said he. 'Though I am a man and a creature ofpleasure, I am become as a woman that bears children. For the time iscoming when I shall give birth to one younger than myself, later thanmyself. .. . '

"'Your old self will reappear more beautiful, new-souled, transfigured, ' I replied. 

"Then my companion looked at me with eyes that were full both ofyearning and of pain, and he said, 'Though I would fain stay with you, yet must I go apart. For I have one battle yet to fight, and that Ican only fight alone. Farewell, dear friend, husband of the woman thatis in me!'

"Then said I farewell and we embraced and parted, for I saw that itwas meet for him to commune alone with God and gain strength to winhis victory. 

"The town lay in the west; he went into the north and I into the east. Once more I was alone. "

"Come, let us devise new means of happiness, " said my companion. "Letus wander up-stream to the silent cradle of the river. For all daylong I hear the river calling my name. "

And we journeyed a three days' tramp into the mountains, following thesilver river upward and upward to the pure fountain of its birth. Andon the way, moved by the glow of intercourse, I told my companion thestory of Zenobia, and also that of the old pilgrim whom I met at NewAthos. It was strange to us that the peasants in the country shouldlive and die so much more worthily than the educated folk who live inthe towns. God made the country, man made the town, and the devil madethe country town, was not for us an idle platitude but a burning fact, though we agreed that man was often a much more evil creator than thedevil, and that the great capitals of Europe and America were theworst places for Man's heavenly spirit that Time had ever known. 

Imagine our three days' journeying, the joy of the lonely one who hasfound a companion, the sharing of happiness that is doubling it; thebeauty to live in, the little daintinesses and prettinesses of Natureto point out; the morning, sun-decked and dewy, the wide happiness ofnoon, the shadows of the great rocks where we rested, and the flash ofthe green and silver river tumbling outside in the sunshine; quiescentevening and the old age of the day, sunset and the remembrance of theday's glory, the pathos of looking back to the golden morning. 

The first night we made our bed where the plover has her nest, in agrassy hollow on the shelf of a mountain. 

"The day is done, " said my companion. "A little space of time hasdied. Now see the vision of the Eternal, which comes after death;" andhe pointed to the night sky, in which one by one little lamps werelighting. 

The bright world passed away, faded away in my eyes and became at lasta dark night sky in which shone countless stars. During the day, mysoul expressed itself to itself in the beauty which is for an hour, but at night it re-expressed itself in terms of the Infinite. I lookedto my companion, and his eyes and lips shone in the darkness sothat he seemed dressed in cloth cut from the night sky itself, andinterwoven with stars. We lay together and looked up into the far highsky, we breathed lightly: it seemed we exhaled the scent of flowersthat we had inbreathed in the morning--we slept. 

And then the morning! The quiet, quiet hours, the flitting of moths inthe dawn twilight, the mysterious business of mice among the stonesabout us, the cold fleeting air just before sunrise, full of ghosts, our own awakening and the majestic sunrise, the exaggeration of allshapes, the birth of shadows, the beaming heralds, glorious rose-redsummits and effulgent silvered crags, ten thousand trumpets raised tothe zenith, and ten thousand promises outspoken!

We arose, my companion and I--he only seemed to come to life when thefirst beam touched me. I greeted the sun with my voice, and turninground, there at my feet was my friend, familiar, dear, so ready forliving that one would have said the sun himself was his father. 

"I was dead, " said he, "and behold I am alive again. The world passedaway, and behold, at the voice of a trumpet, it hath come back. Beautyfaded yestreen from colour into darkness, from life to death, andto-day it hath out-blossomed once again; the Sun was its father, deargentle Night its mother. .. . "

And running with me, he clambered upon a rock and outstretched hisarms to the sun as if he were a woman looking to a strong man. 

"Greater is the glory of sunrise than the glory of sunset, for thesunrise promises what shall be, whereas the sunset only tells theglory of the past. The sunrise promises beautiful days, the sunsetlooks back upon beauty as if there were nothing in the future tocompare with what has just departed. "

Thus sang my friend, and we scampered along to the newly wakenedriver. Cold and fresh was the water, as if it also had slept in thenight. It was full of the night, but the morning which was in usstrove with it, and at a stroke conquered it. The sun laughed to seeus playing in the water, and we greeted him with handfuls of sparkles. The river was lusty and strong; it wrestled with us, grasped, pushed, pulled, buffeted, threw stones, charged forward in waves, laboriouslyrolled boulders against us. .. . 

We made our morning fire; its blue smoke rose slowly and crookedly, and the brittle wood burning crackled like little dogs barking; thekettle hissed on the hot, black stones where we had balanced it overthe fire, it puffed, it growled, blew out its steam and boiled, boiledover; tea, bread and cheese, bright yellow plums from a tree hardby, and then away once more we sped on our journey, not walking, butrunning, scarcely running but flying, leaping, clambering . .. And mycompanion performed the most astonishing feats, for he was ever morelively than I was. 

The sun strengthened. First it had empowered us to go forward, butafter some hours it bid us rest. Seven o'clock ran to eight, eight tonine; nine to ten was hot, ten was scorching, and by eleven we wereconquered. We rested and let the glorious husband of the earth lookdown upon us, and into us. 

"How pathetic it is that men are even now at this moment sweating, and grinding, and cursing in a town, " said my companion to me. He waslying outstretched before me on a slope of the sheep-cropped downs. "They altogether miss life, life, the inestimable boon. And they getnothing in return. Even what they hope to gain is but dust and ashes. They waited perhaps a whole eternity to be born, and when they die itmay be that for a whole eternity they must wait again. God allottedthem each year eighty days of summer and eighty summers in theirlives, and they are content to sell them for a small price, content toearn wages. .. . And their share in all this beauty, they hardly know ofit, their share in the sun. 

"Have you not realised that we have more than our share of the sun?The sun is fuller and more glorious than we could have expected. Thatis because millions of people have lived without taking their share. We feel in ourselves all _their_ need of it, all their want of it. That is why we are ready to take to ourselves such immense quantitiesof it. We can rob no one, but, on the contrary, we can save a littleto give to those who have none--when we meet them. You must pull downthe very sun from heaven and put it in your writings. You must givesamples of the sun to all those who live in towns. Perhaps some ofthose attracted by the samples will give up the smoke and grind ofcities and live in this superfluity of sunshine. "

Then I said to my joyous comrade: "Many live their lives of toil andgloom and ugliness in the belief that in another life after this theywill be rewarded. They think that God wills them to live this life ofwork. "

"Then perhaps in the next life they will again live in toil and gloom, postponing their happiness once more, " said my companion. "Or on theDay of Judgment they will line up before God and say with a melancholycountenance, 'Oh Lord we want our wages for having lived!' . .. An insult to God and to our glorious life, but how terrible, howunutterably sad! And the reply of the angel sadder still, 'Did you notknow that life itself was a reward, a glory?'"

V

THE UNCONQUERABLE HOPE

Once, long ago, when an earthquake rent the hills, and mountainsbecame valleys, and the earth itself opened and divided, letting inthe sea, a new island was formed far away upon an unvisited ocean. Outof an inland province of a vast continent this island was made, allthe land upon it having been submerged, and all the peoples that dweltto north and to south, to east and to west, having been drowned. 

There survived upon the island a few men and women who remainedundisputed masters of the land, and they lived there and bred there. No one visited them, for the island was remote, unknown; and theyvisited no one, for they had never seen the sea before, they had noteven known of its existence, and they did not know how to fashion aboat. 

The island became fertile, and men and women married, and bore sonsand daughters. The people in the island multiplied and grew rich. Butall the while they lived without the invention of the boat, and theythought their island was the whole world, not knowing of the otherlands that lay beyond the sea. 

The original people died in their time, and their sons and daughtersand grandsons and granddaughters, and the newer, later, survived andgave birth to newer and later still. And the story of the origin ofthe island was handed down from generation to generation. 

The story was a matter of fact. It became history, it became legendand tradition, it became a myth, it became almost the foundation ofreligion. For a thousand years a lost family of mankind dwelt on thatisland on the unvisited sea, and none of their kindred ever came outof its barren sea-horizons to claim them. 

And then, lest these children of men should utterly forget, a childwas born who should understand. As happens once in many centuries, awise man arose, and he interpreted the legends and traditions, andrefreshed in the memory of this people the significance of theirorigin. 

He taught them the mystery of the sea, and of the beyond, thathitherto unimaginable beyond, so that men yearned to cross the ocean. 

Then the ignorant rose up and slew that man, thinking him an evil one, luring men to their death. And those who had understood him sorrowedgreatly. His life had been pure, white, without reproach, and thelight that shone in his eyes was the same that burned in the stars. 

But though the ignorant could destroy his body, they could not destroythe fair life that he had lived, that wonderful example of how men maystand in the presence of the eternal mysteries. 

There arose followers who dedicated themselves to the truth he hadrevealed, that truth boundless and infinite as the sea itself. And they lit a fire like the sacred fire in the temples of thefire-worshippers, and that fire should never be extinguished untilsome sign rose out of the horizon, illumining and dissolving themystery. 

"Who knows, " they say, "but that we are the descendants of kings?There is that in us that is foreign to this land, something notindigenous to this soil, of which this island is not worthy. It comethfrom afar and had elsewhere its begetting. In us are latent unnamedpowers, senses that in this island cannot be used. Our eyes areunnecessarily bright, our hearts superfluously strong. This Earthcannot satisfy us, it cannot afford scope enough, we cannot tryourselves upon it. This is the hope that we keep holy, that out of theheavens or across the sea our kindred, our masters, or our gods willclaim us and take us to a new land where our hearts' meaning maycompletely show itself outwardly to the sky; where our latent senseswill find the things that can be sensed, and our faculties that whichcan be made, where our hearts and wills may be satisfied, and we mayfind wings with which to soar over all seas. "

Behold these dedicates, with their torch of remembrance kindled inthe night of ignorance, these living eternally in the presence of themystery! They pine upon shores, looking over the unbridgeable abyss, yearning their souls towards that ultimate horizon, with limbs vainlystrong, eyes vainly keen, hearts ready for an adventure they may notundertake. At their feet wails the sea with never-ending sadness. In their minds are haunting tunes, the echoes of the wailing of thewaves. They cry, and no one hears; they sing, and no one responds;they are like those who have loved once and lost, and who may never becomforted. 

These nurse in their hearts the unconquerable hope. 

 * * * * *

So is it with us upon the world, we irreconcilable ones; we stand uponmany shores and strain our eyes to see into the unknown. We are upona deserted island and have no boats to take us from star to star, notonly upon a deserted island but upon a deserted universe, for eventhe stars are familiar; they are worlds not unlike our own. The wholeuniverse is our world and it is all explained by the scientists, oris explicable. But beyond the universe, no scientist, not any of us, knows anything. On all shores of the universe washes the ocean ofignorance, the ocean of the inexplicable. We stand upon the confinesof an explored world and gaze at many blank horizons. We yearn towardsour natural home, the kingdom in which our spirits were begotten. Wehave rifled the world, and tumbled it upside-down, and run our fingersthrough all its treasures, yet have not come upon the charter of ourbirth. We explored Beauty till we came to the shore of a great sea; weexplored music, and came upon the outward shore of harmony and earthlytruth, and found its limits. 

Some spoke of our limitations, but it is our glory that our heartsknow no limitations except those which are the defects of the world. The world is full of limitations, but our hearts scorn them, beingfull of boundless power. 

Some day for us shall come into that blank sky-horizon which is calledthe zenith, a stranger, a man or a god, perhaps not like ourselves, yet having affinities with ourselves, and correlating ourselves tosome family of men or gods of which we are all lost children. We shallthen know our universal function and find our universal orbit. 

As yet the True Sun stands in the antipodes, the great light is notvouchsafed. In the night of ignorance our little sun is shining andstars gleam upon our sky-horizons. But when the True Sun shines theirbrightness will be obscured, and we shall know a new day and a newnight, a new heaven and a new earth. 

It is written, "When He appears we shall be like Him. "

VI

THE PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM

I

Once, possibly, upon the world, man did not know of God; he had notlooked to the blank horizon and spoken to the Someone beyond. He hadall the need to speak, all the oppression in his soul, all the sorrowand longing pent up in him and the tears unshed, but knew no means ofrelief, did not even conceive of any one beyond himself. He had nogreat Father, as we have. A strange, unhappy life he lived uponthe world, uncomforted, unfriended. He looked at the stars andcomprehended them not; and at the graves, and they said nought. Hewalked alone under heaven's wide hollowness. 

We of later days have God as a heritage, or if we did find Him ofourselves, the road was made easy for us. But some one far away backin human life found God first, and said to Him the first prayer; somehard, untutored savage found out the gentlest and loveliest fact inour religion. A savage came upon the pearl and understood it and felldown in joy. A man one day named God and emptied his heart to Him inprayer. And he told the discovery to his brothers, and men all beganto pray. The world lost half its heaviness at once. Men learned thattheir prayers were nearly all the same, that God heard the same storyfrom thousands and hundreds of thousands of hearts. Thus men camenearer to one another, and knew themselves one in the presence of God, and they prayed together and formed churches. Man, the homeless one, had advanced a step towards his home, for he began to live partly inthe beyond. 

I am reminded of this by the joy which accompanies the personaldiscovery of some new rite which brings us into relation with theunseen. 

Following that hypothetical first man, how many real first men therehave been, each discovering new things about God and the beyond, giving mankind new letters in the Sanscrit, and each discoveryaccompanied by joy and relief. 

The conception of life as part of a journey to the heavenly citywas, I think, one of these discoveries; and its rite was the churchprocession to the altar. In symbolic act man learned to make thejourney beyond the blank horizon. He enlarged the church processionto the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and he enlarged the pilgrimage toJerusalem to the pilgrimage of life itself. In the understanding oflife as a pilgrimage, the wanderer and seeker has the world for hischurch. 

We are all on the road to the City of Jerusalem. Those who areconsciously on the road may call themselves pilgrims; they have a lifeof glory in the heart as well as of toiling by the way. They are in acertain definite perspective, and they see all things that happento them in the light of the pilgrimage. I for my part, directly Idefinitely set out for Jerusalem, on the very first day, at the sightof the first stranger who crossed my path, exclaimed to myself, "Imeet him on the way to Jerusalem; that makes a difference, does itnot?"

But not only does the goal of the pilgrimage lend a new significanceto the present and the future; it also lights up the past. It makesevery idlest step of worth. It makes us so understanding of the pastthat we would not alter one jot or tittle in it. Our whole life istransfigured. Every deed of our hands, every thought of our minds andword of our lips, every deed of others or of Nature seen, every wordof man or sound of Nature heard, is made into one glowing garment--thestory of our life-pilgrimage _via_ the present moment to the HeavenlyCity. 

I started on my pilgrimage long ago, so long ago I can hardly tellwhen. As Jeremy the pilgrim said of Mikhail: "He wished to go when hewas a little boy; that means, he began to go then, for whenever youbegin to wish you begin the pilgrimage. After that, no matter whereyou are, you are sure to be on the way. " It is a stage in theawakening of consciousness, that wishing to go; the next stage isintending to go, and the next, deciding to go and setting out--butindependently of these wishes and intentions and decisions, we werereally on the road, and going all the while. By our true wishes wedivine our destiny. 

Yes, even long ago I wished, and to-day I am still on the way, thoughI have actually pilgrimaged to Jerusalem in Palestine. My pilgrimagewas a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage. It was the drawing of a pictureon earth of a journey in heaven. As a day is to a year, and as a yearto man's life, so is man's life to that which we do not know, thecourse of our life beyond Time's blank horizon. If I have oftenstopped to tell of a little day, or a little hour in the day, itis because I sought there a picture of Eternity, of the wholesignificance of the pilgrimage. 

I suppose I did not know that when I first left England to go toRussia I was turning my face toward Jerusalem. Yet it was so. For Ishould never have gone direct from London to the Holy Land. If I hadattempted such a journey I should probably have failed to reach thegreat Shrine, for it is only a certain sort of people travelling in acertain sort of way who find admittance easily. By the Russian peasantI was enabled to go. It is strange to think that even when I wasjourneying northward to Archangel I was winding my way Jerusalem-wardin the sacred labyrinth. And I could not have gone straight southwardwith the pilgrims without wandering in contrary directions first ofall, for it was necessary to come into sympathy and union with thepeasant soul. There is a peasant deep down in my soul, or a peasantsoul deep down in me, as well as an exterior, sensitive, culturedsoul. I had to discover that peasant, to realise myself as one of thepoor in spirit to whom is the kingdom. 

Christ preached His gospel to the peasant. His is a peasant's gospel, it seems to me, such a gospel as the peasants of Russia would take tothemselves to-day if Jesus came preaching to them in the way He did tothe common _people_ of the Jews. The cultured would disdain it, untila new St. Paul interpreted it for them in terms that they couldunderstand, so giving it a "vogue". Both the peasants and the culturedwould be Christians, but with this difference, that in one case theseed would be growing on the surface, and in the other from thedepths. The peasant, of course, has no _surface_; he is the good blackearth all ready for the seed. 

There is a way for the cultured: it is to discover the peasant downbeneath their culture, the original elemental soil down under theartificial surface, and to allow the sweetness and richness ofthat soil to give expression on that surface. True culture is thusachieved; that which is not only on the surface but of the depths. 

Thereby might every one discover not only the peasant but the pilgrimsoul within; each man living on the world might realise himself as onthe way to Jerusalem. Such realisation would be the redemption ofthe present culture of the West. For workers of every kind--not onlyartists, musicians, novelists, but the handicraftsmen, the shapers ofuseful things, of churches and houses and laws, even the labourers inthe road and the garden--would be living in the strength of a promiseand the light of a vision. 

 * * * * *

The pilgrimage was a carrying of the cross, but it was also a happywayfaring. It was a hard journey but not comfortless. Many of thepilgrims walked thousands of miles in Russia before finally embarkingon the pilgrim boat. They walked solitarily, not in great bands, andthey were poor. From village to village, from the Far North, CentralRussia and the East, they tramped their way to Odessa and Batoum, andthey depended all the way on other men's hospitality. As Jeremy said, "They had no money: instead of which they found other men's charity. "They lived night by night in hundreds of peasant homes, and prayed dayby day in hundreds of little churches. Not only did they find theirdaily bread "for the love of God, " but in many cases they werefurnished even to Jerusalem itself with passage money for the boatjourney, and bread to keep the body alive. 

Such pilgrims often were illiterate, and it was astonishing how theyremembered all the folk they had to pray for at Jerusalem; forevery poor peasant who could not leave his native village, but gavethreepence or four-pence to the wanderer, asked to be remembered inthe land "where God walked". Perhaps there were aids to remembrance. Many people in the villages, wanting to be sure that their prayers andwants would be remembered, wrote their names on slips of paper andthrust them into the pilgrim's hand. Thus in the hostelry at Jerusaleman old wanderer came to me one morning with a sheaf of dirty papers onwhich were written names, and I read them out for him aloud, thus:--

 Maria for health. Katerina for health. Rheumatic Gregory for health. Ivan for the peace of soul of his mother. For the peace of soul of Prascovia. 

And so on; and I sorted them into separate bundles--those who wishedprayers for health, and those who wanted peace of soul to the dead. 

I, for my part, have walked many a thousand versts from village tovillage, and have been glad to live the peasant-pilgrim's life. Tramping was hard for me also, as also far from comfortless. I sawsights which amply repaid me, if I wanted repayment, for every verst Itramped. Often, and shamefully, have I looked back and sighed for thetown that I had left--its friends, its comforts and its pleasures; butI also found other men's hospitality and the warmth of the stranger'slove. Very sweet it was to sit in the strange man's home, to play withhis children on the floor, to eat and drink with him, to be blessed byhim and by his wife, and sleep at last under the cottage ikons. Andthough peasants knew the way was hard, "How fortunate you are!" theysaid. I was more fortunate than they knew, for, being the voice ofthose who were without voice, I had a life by the way in communionwith every common sight and sound. I lived in communion with sunny andrainy days, with the form of mountain and valley, with the cornfieldand the forest and the meadow. Not only was man hospitable to thetramp, but Nature also. The stars spoke of my pilgrimage, the seamurmured to me; wild fruit was my food. I slept with the bare world asmy house, the sky as my roof, and God as host. 

I saw strange happenings in obscure little villages. Wherever I wentI saw little pictures, and not only great pageants; I knelt in littlewooden churches as well as in the great cathedrals. And I brought allthat I met and all that I had experienced to Jerusalem, so that whenthe chorus of thanksgiving went up in the monastery on the day when wearrived, all my world was singing in it. 

Sometimes I met pilgrims, especially at monasteries, and sometimessojourned with one along the road, but it was not until we reachedthe pilgrim-boat that we found ourselves many and together. For thegreater part of the pilgrim life is necessarily in solitude. A greatnumber of pilgrims starting together and marching along the road isalmost unthinkable. The true desire to start takes one by oneself. The pilgrim life is born like a river, far away apart, up in themountains. It is only when it is reaching its goal that it joinsitself to others. When we reached the port of embarkation we were agreat band of pilgrims, but the paths by which we had come togetherwere many and diverse, ramifying all over Russia. 

We thought, but for the haunting fear of storms, that when we reachedthe boat the arduous part of our journey would have been accomplished. We should cease our plodding over earth, and should rest on the seain the sun. We would sing hymns together. Hymns are, of course, principally designed for pilgrims, for man as a pilgrim, who needs toconsole himself with music on the road. We would talk among ourselvesof our life on the way; the days would go past in pleasant converseand the nights in happy slumber. But that was a mistake. The seajourney was worse than any of our tramping; it was the very crown ofour suffering. 

There were 560 of us packed into the holds of that hulk, the_Lazarus_, on which we sailed, and there were besides, many Turks, Arabs, and Syrians; of cattle, two score cows and a show bull with twomouths; of beasts, a cage of apes; and, as if to complete pandemoniumin storm, there lay bound in his bed on the open deck a raving madman. We were a fortnight on the sea, wandering irrelevantly from port toport of the Levant, discharging a cargo of sugar; and all the whilethe poor beggar-pilgrims lived on the crusts of which they hadsackfuls collected in Russia, crusts of black bread all gone greenwith mould. I looked at the piles of them heaped on the deck to air inpleasant weather, and was amazed that men could live simply on decay. We had two storms, in one of which our masts were broken down and wewere told we should go to the bottom. The peasants rolled over oneanother in the hold like corpses, and clutched at one another likemadmen. In despair some offered all their money, all that they had, toa priest as a votive offering to St. Nicholas, that the storm mightabate. The state of the ship I should not dare to depict--the filth, the stench, the vermin. For nearly a thousand passengers therewere three lavatories without bolts! Fitly was the boat named_Lazarus_--Lazarus all sores. What the poor simple peasant men andwomen suffered none can tell. They had not the thought to take careof themselves as I had, and indeed they would have scorned to savethemselves. "It is necessary to suffer, " they said. 

It was a hard and terrible way, and yet on the last day of the voyage, in the sight of the Holy Land, our hearts all leapt within us withgrateful joy. We felt it was worth it, every whit. When I think ofthis journey as of that of Christian in the _Pilgrims Progress_, Icall this ship and the journey on it the Valley of the Shadow ofDeath, full of foul pits and hobgoblins; something which must bepassed through if Jerusalem is to be attained; the dread gulf whichlies between earthly and heavenly life. It was necessary to passthrough it, and what was on the other side was infinitely worth thestruggle. There is a story in Dostoievsky of a Russian free-thinkerwhose penance beyond this world was to walk a quadrillion versts. Whenhe finished this walk and saw the Heavenly City at the end of it hefell down and cried out, "It is worth it, every inch; not only would Iwalk a quadrillion of versts, but a quadrillion of quadrillions raisedto the quadrillionth power. "

II

At last we arrived at Jerusalem. The onlookers saw a long, jaded-looking flock of poor people toiling up the hilly road fromJaffa, wearing Russian winter garb under the straight-beating sun ofthe desert, dusty, road-worn, and beaten. We went along the middle ofthe roadway like a procession, observed of all observers; in onesense scarcely worth looking at, yet in another the most significantspectacle of the day or of the time. We were--religious Europe justarrived at the Heavenly City. 

Certainly it would have been difficult to know the happiness andexaltation of our hearts; perhaps to do that it would have beennecessary to step into line and follow us to the Cathedral and theSepulchre; perhaps even necessary to anticipate our coming, and joinus long before, on the way in Russia. 

But we went forward unconscious of our own significance, indifferentto the gaze of the curious. There was one thought in our minds: thatwe had actually attained unto Jerusalem and were walking the last fewmiles to the Holy of Holies. 

We passed in through the gate of the Russian settlement, and in amoment were at the monastery doors. How gladly we threw off our packson the green grass sward and hurried into church to the ThanksgivingService, buying sheaves of little candles at the door and pressing into light them before the sacred ikons. When the priest was given thegreat Bible to read, it lay on the bare heads of pilgrims; so closedid the eager ones press together to share in the bearing that theHoly Book needed no other support. We sang the _Mnogia Lieta_ witha deep harmonious chorus; we prostrated ourselves and prayed andcrossed. I stood in the midst and sang or knelt with the rest, timidas a novice, made gentle by the time, and I learned to cross myself ina new way. One by one the peasants advanced and kissed the gold crossin the hands of the priest, and among them I went up and was blessedas they were. And we were all in rapture. Standing at the thresholdafterwards, smiling peasants with wet shining eyes confessed to oneanother their unworthiness and their happiness; and a girl all inlaughing tears fell down at our feet, kissing our dusty boots, andasking our forgiveness that she had been permitted to see Jerusalem. 

We were taken to the refectory and seated at many tables to a peasantdinner: cabbage soup and porridge, bread and _kvass_, just as they areserved in Russia itself. We passed to the hostelry and were given, at the rate of three farthings a day, beds and benches that we mightoccupy as long as we wished to stay in Jerusalem. The first night wewere all to get as rested as possible, the next we were to spend inthe Sepulchre itself. I slept in a room with four hundred peasants, on a wooden shelf covered with old pallets of straw. The shelves werehard and dirty; there was no relaxation of our involuntary asceticism, but we slept well. There was music in our ears. We had attained toJerusalem, and our dreams were with the angels. Jerusalem the earthlyhad not forced itself upon our minds; we held the symbolism of thejourney lightly, and the mind read a mystery in delicate emotions. Thetime was to come when some of us would be discontented with Jerusalem, as some of the disciples who fell away were discontented with the poorand humble Jesus; but as yet even to these all the material outwardappearance of Jerusalem was a rumour. We knew not what we should seewhen we stepped out on the morrow; perhaps pearly gates, streets ofgold, angels with harps. Jerusalem the earthly was unproved. We had asyet only toiled up the steep Jaffa way, and the road to heaven itselfmight be not unlike that road. To-morrow . .. Who could say whatto-morrow would unfold? For those of us who could see with the eyes ofthe heart there could be no disappointment. But for all, this night ofgolden dreams was a respite, and Jerusalem the symbol and Jerusalemthe symbolised were one. Happy, happy pilgrims!

Next day we went to the strange and ugly church erected over theSepulchre of Jesus, the "Church of the Life-giving Grave"; and wekissed the stone of anointing--the stone on which the body of Jesuslay whilst it was being wrapped in fair linen and anointed with oil. We knelt before the ark-like inner temple which is built over _thehollow in the rock_. We were received into that temple, and one by onecrept along the passage-way to the Holy of Holies, the inmost shrineof Christendom. Only music could tell what the peasant realised inthat chamber as he knelt where the sacred Body lay, and kissed thehollow in the stone. 

Then we spent a whole night in the Sepulchre and entered into themystery of death--saw our own death as in a picture before us, ourabiding in the grave until the resurrection. In the great dark churchthe solemn service went forward. On the throne of the altar atGolgotha near by, the candles gleamed. Night grew quiet all around, and the Syrian stars looked over us, so that centuries and ages passedaway. 

III

We went through the life of Jesus in symbolical procession, journeyedto Bethlehem and kissed the manger where the baby Jesus was laid, thatfirst cradle as opposed to the second, the hollow in the rock. We cameas the Kings, saw the shepherds and their flocks, saw the star stopover the house of Mary, and went in to do homage, bringing thither thegifts of our hearts--gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 

We tramped to the river Jordan, and all in our death shrouds atBethabara, waded into the stream and were baptized. In symbolic actthe priest baptizing us was veritably John, but in second symbolism itwas Jesus. As we stepped down into the water it was John, but whenwe stepped up again it was Jesus receiving us into light. We made apicture of the past, but we had also in our hearts a presentment ofthe far future. As we stood there on the banks all in our white robesit seemed like a rehearsal of the final resurrection morning. Theseshrouds in which the pilgrims are baptized they preserve to theirdeath day, in order that they may be buried in them. They believe thaton the Last Day not only will their bodies of this day be raised up, but the Jordan-washed garments will be restored as well. 

We followed the course of the river down to the Dead Sea, the lowestplace on earth, and thence walked across the wilderness to theMountain of Temptation, where in innumerable caves had lived thousandsof hermits and saints. In a great caravan we journeyed to the Lake ofGalilee, where the Twelve were called. We camped upon the mountainwhere the five thousand had been fed, and scattered bread there. Wedwelt in the little town of Nazareth and saw the well where Mary haddrawn water. We heard of all the dearnesses which the priests andmonks had imagined as likely in the boyhood of Jesus. We stood andwondered at the place where Mary and Joseph are supposed to havestopped and missed their twelve-year-old son who had gone to theTemple to teach. We stood where Jesus had conversed with the woman ofSamaria. We visited the cottage where the water was changed into wine. At Bethany we prayed at Lazarus' grave. 

We lived with the life of Jesus as the story has been told. It was asecond pilgrimage, an underlining of the essentials of the first. Wefinished the first pilgrimage at the Church of the Tomb on the dayafter our arrival in Jerusalem; we should finish the second on thelast day of Holy Week, at the triumphant Easter morning. 

On the Friday before Palm Sunday we went out to Bethany and sleptin the monastery which is built "where Martha served. " Next day wereturned to Jerusalem with olive branches, palms and wild flowers, scattering blossoms as we walked. On Saturday evening and in themorning of Palm Sunday we filled the churches with our branches. Twoaged pilgrims who had died were buried on Palm Sunday. They lay inopen coffins in church dressed in the shrouds they had worn at Jordan, covered with olive branches and little blue wild flowers (Jacob'sladder), which the pilgrims had picked for them at Bethany. On theirfaces was perfect peace. The pilgrims thought them happy to die in theHoly Land and be buried there. 

The crown of the pilgrimage was Holy Week. By Palm Sunday all thepilgrims were back in Jerusalem from their little pilgrimages toNazareth, Jericho, and Jordan. The hostelries were crowded. Fully fivehundred men and women slept in the hall in which I was accommodated. All night long the sound of prayer and hymn never died away. At dawneach day a beggar pilgrim sanctified our benches with incense which heburned in an old tin can. By day we visited the shrines of Jerusalem, the Virgin's tomb, the Mount of Olives, the Praetorium, Pilate'shouse, the dungeon where Jesus was put in the stocks. We saw thewashing of the feet on Holy Thursday; we walked down the steep andnarrow way where Christ carried the cross and stumbled, kissedthe place where Saint Veronica held out the cloth which took themiraculous likeness. We examined our souls before Good Friday; we wentto the special yearly Holy Communion now invested with a strangeand awful solemnity. There was the prostration before the Cross atGolgotha on Good Friday, the receiving of the Sacred Fire, symbol ofthe Resurrection, on Holy Saturday, and then the night of the year andthe Great Morning. It seemed when we all kissed one another on EasterMorning that we had outlived everything--our own life, our own death;we were in heaven. In symbolic act we had attained unto bliss. Theprocession had marched round the church to the supreme emotionalmoment. We had all stood on the highest holy place on earth and lookedout for a moment upon Paradise. We had caught the gleam of the Sun ofanother universe. 

What happens in the pilgrim's soul on Easter Night is something whichyou and I and all of us know; if not in our own minds and in thedomain of letters and words, at least in the heart where music speaks. To those who have not themselves attained unto Jerusalem and the"highest of all earthly" it is a promise, and to those who have beenit is a memory and a possession. The Greek monks say that at thesepulchre a fire bursts out of its own account each Easter Eve, andthere is at least a truth of symbolism in their miracle. An old bishopand saint was once asked to give sight to a blind woman. He hadperformed no miracles in his life, yet he promised to pray for her. And whilst he knelt in church praying, the candles which were unlitburst of themselves into flame. The woman at that moment also receivedher sight and went home praising God. It is something like that whichhappens when the pilgrim kneels on Easter Night. Candles unlit in thetemple of his soul burst into flame, and by their light new picturesare seen. The part of him that was blind and craved sight gains openeyes at that moment, and that which seemed impossible is accomplished. 

IV

And I, to use the metaphor of the unvisited island, had in a dreamcrossed the ocean, had become, through the fulfilling of a rite, morebound to the life which is beyond. Henceforth I have a more crediblepromise and a more substantial hope. 

But what then? The journey is ended, the gleam of the vision fades, and we all return to the life we came from. We descend from what thepilgrims call the highest holy place on earth and get back to theordinary level of life. How can we go back and live the dull roundagain? Shall we not be as Lazarus is depicted in Browning's story ofhim, spoiled for earth, having seen heaven? The Russian at home callsthe returned pilgrim _polu-svatoe_, a half-saint: does that perhapsmean that life is spoilt for him?

Some hundreds of aged pilgrims die every year in Lent; they falldead on the long tramps in Galilee on the way to Nazareth. Many passpeacefully away in Jerusalem itself without even seeing Easter there. They are accounted happy. To be buried at Jerusalem is considered anespecially sweet thing, and it is indeed very good for these aged onesthat the symbol and that which it symbolised should coincide, and thatfor them the journey to Jerusalem the earthly should be so obviouslyand materially a big step towards Jerusalem the golden. It would havebeen sad in a way for such old folk to return once more across theocean to the old, somewhat irrelevant life of Mother Russia. But whatof the young who must of necessity go back?

Once Easter was over it was marvellous how eager we were to get on thefirst boat and go home again. What were we going to do when we gotthere, seeing that we had been to Jerusalem?

We carry our vision back into daily life, or rather, we carry thememory of it in our hearts until a day of fulfilment. All true visionsare promises, and that which we had was but a glimpse of a Jerusalemwe shall one day live in altogether. 

The peasants took many pictures of the sacred places of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem ikons, back with them to their little houses in Russia, there to put them in the East corners of their rooms. They willhenceforth light lamps and candles before these pictures. The candlebefore the picture is, as we know, man's life being lived in front ofthe vision of Jerusalem; man's ordinary daily life in the presence ofthe heavenly city. 

We realise life itself as the pilgrimage of pilgrimages. Life containsmany pilgrimages to Jerusalem, just as it contains many flowerings ofspring to summer, just as it contains many feasts of Communion and notmerely one. Some of the pilgrims actually go as many as ten times tothat Jerusalem in Palestine. But there are Jerusalems in other placesif they only knew, and pilgrimages in other modes. It is possible togo back and live the pilgrimage in another way, and to find anotherJerusalem. Life has its depths: we will go down into them. We mayforget the vision there, but as a true pilgrim once said, "We shallalways live again to see our golden hour of victory. " That is thetrue pilgrim's faith. He will reach Jerusalem again and again. He mayforget, but he will always remember again; he will always rise againto the light of memory. Deep in the depths of this dark universe ourlittle daily sun is shining, but up above there is another Sun. Attimes throughout our life we rise to the surface, and for a minutecatch a glimpse of that Sun's light: at each of these times we shallhave attained unto Jerusalem and have completed a pilgrimagewithin the pilgrimage. There is light on the faces of those livingheroically: it is the light of the vision of Jerusalem. 

VII

THE MESSAGE FROM THE HERMIT

The question remains, "Who is the tramp?" Who is the walking personseen from the vantage ground of these pages? He is necessarily amasked figure; he wears the disguise of one who has escaped, and alsoof one who is a conspirator. He is not the dilettante literary persongone tramping, nor the pauper vagabond who writes sonnets, thougheither of these rôles may be part of his disguise. He is not merelysomething negligible or accidental or ornamental, he is something realand true, the product of his time, at once a phenomenon and a portent. 

He is the walking hermit, the world-forsaker, but he is above allthings a rebel and a prophet, and he stands in very distinct relationto the life of his time. 

The great fact of the human world to-day is the tremendous commercialmachine which is grinding out at a marvellous acceleration the smallerand meaner sort of man, the middle class, the average man, "thedamned, compact, liberal majority, " to use the words of Ibsen, andthe world daily becomes "more _Chinese_". The rocks are fraying oneanother down to desert sand, and mankind becomes a new Sahara. 

But over and against the commercial machine stand the rebels, thedefiers of it, those who wish to limit its power, to redeem some ofthe slaves, and to rebuild the temples which it has broken down. 

Commercialism is at present the great enemy of the individual man. Onealready reads in leading articles such phrases as "our commercial, national, and imperial welfare"--commercial first, national second, imperial third, and spiritual nowhere. 

Commercialism has already subdued the Church of Christ in WesternEurope, it has disorganised the forces of art, and it tends to denythe living sources of religion, art, and life. 

It remains for the rebel to assert that even though the name and ideaof Christianity be sold--as was its Founder--for silver, though itbe rendered an impotent and useless word, yet there is in mankind areligion which is independent of all names and all words, a spring ofliving water that may be subterraneanised for a while, but can neverbe altogether dammed and stopped; that there is an art which shallblossom through all ages, either in the secret places of the world orin the open, in the place of honour, as long as man lives upon theworld. 

And he does more than assert, than merely wind upon his horn outsidethe gates of the enchanted city, he is a builder, collector, saver. He wishes to find the few who, in this fearful commercial submersion, ought to be living the spiritual life, and showing forth in blossomthe highest significance of the Adam tree. He himself lives the lifewhich more must of necessity live, if only as a matter of salt to savethe body politic. 

It has been urged, "You are unpracticable; you want a world oftramps--how are you going to live?" But we no more want a world oftramps than the promiser of new life wants a world of promisers: wewant a world that will take the life promised. 

As I have said, we want first of all the few, the hermits, saints, thealtogether lovely men and women, the blossoming of the race. It isnecessary that these be found or that they find themselves, and thatthey take their true orbits and live their true lives; for all therest of ordinary humanity is waiting to live its life in relation tothese. The few must live their lives out to the full in order that allothers may live their lives completely; for the temple of humanity hasnot only the broad floor, but the Cross glittering above the pinnacle. 

The night is dark, but there is plenty of hope for the future; thevery extremity of our calamity is something that bids us hope. Fiftyyears ago nobody would listen to a gospel of rebellion, and such agreat man as Carlyle was actually preaching that to labour is to pray. To-day men are ready to lay down their working tools and listen to anyinsurrectionist, so aware has mankind become of an impending spiritualbankruptcy. Never in any preceding generation has the youngman standing on the threshold of life felt more unsettled. Hisunsettlement has frequently turned to frenzy and anarchy in individualcases. Never has he cast his eyes about more desperately for a way ofredemption or a spiritual leader. For him, as for all of us, the onerequirement is to find out what is the _first_ thing to do; not thenearest, but the _first_, the most essential; the one after which allother things naturally take their places. 

It is not to wreck the great machine, for that would be to rush to theother extreme of ruin and disorder. It is not even, as I think, tobuild a new machine, for that would be to enter into a wastefulcompetition wherein we should spend without profit and with much lossof brotherly love, all our patience and our new desires. 

The one way and the first way is to use and subordinate the presentmachine, to limit it to its true domain, and let it be our true andvital servant. 

But how?

By finding the few who can live the life of communion, the few whocan show forth the true significance of the race. By saving our mostprecious thoughts and ideals, and adding them to the similar thoughtsand ideals of others, by putting the instruments of education in theirproper places, by separating and saving in the world of literature andart the expressions of beauty which are valuable to the coming race, as distinguished from those that are merely sold for a price. By themaking solitary, which is making sacred. 

For instance, I would have the famous and wonderful pictures nowfoiling and dwarfing one another in our vulgar galleries, distributedover the Western world. I wish their enfranchisement. Each greatpicture should be given a room to itself, like the Sistine Madonna, not only a room but a temple like that of the Iverskaya at Moscow, notonly a temple but a fair populous province. The great pictures shouldbe objects of pilgrimages, and their temples places of prayer. In thegalleries, as is obvious, the pictures are at their smallest, theirglory pressed back into themselves or overlapped or smudged by theconfusing glory of others. Out in the wide world, enshrined intemples, these pictures would become living hearts, they would havearms dealing out blessings, they would outgrow again till theirinfluence was as wide as the little kingdoms in which they wereenshrined. Pictures would again work miracles. What is more, greatpictures would again be painted. 

This illustration is valuable allegorically. Great pictures are verylike great souls, very like great and beautiful ideas. What is truefor pictures is true for men. 

The men who feel in themselves the instinct for the new life must takesteps to make space for themselves and to make temples. Where theyfind the beautiful, the real, they must take it to themselves andprotect it from enemies, they must at once begin to build walls ofdefence. So great is their responsibility and so delicate their chargethat they must challenge no one, and invite no discussion and nohostility. They must have and hold their own beautiful life as theywould a fair young bride. 

Where they have visions they must build temples, as the Russianmouzhiks build churches and put up crosses. Of course I do not meanmaterial temples, but temples not made by hands, temples of spirit, temples of remembrance. Where they read in books sacred pages theymust make these pages sacred, sacred for them. Where they find mennoble they must have reference to the noble part of them and deny theother. They have to win back the beautiful churches and cathedrals. Often it is said nowadays, "Such and such a church is wonderful andits service lifts one to heaven, but the clergyman and his sermon areimpossible. " But though a clergyman can condition his congregation itis much more true that the congregation can condition the clergyman. It is written, "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them. " When they in the pews are those inwhite robes, then He in the pulpit is the Christ Himself. 

In literature we have to differentiate what is purely a commercialproduct like the yellowback novel, what is educational like theclassic, and what is of the new. With the commercial we have of courseno traffic; the classic is a place for those still learning what hasalready been said, a place for orientisation, for finding out whereone stands. In this category are the Shakespearean performances at thetheatre. In any case the classic is necessarily subordinate to the newliterature, the literature of pioneering and discovery, the literatureof ourselves. It is the school which prepares for the stepping forthon the untrodden ways. 

This fencing off, differentiation and allocation, these defences ofthe beautiful and new, and of the temples enshrining them, shallbe like the walls round a new sanctuary. We shall thereby protectourselves from the encroaching commercial machine, its dwarfingethics, mean postulates, and accurst conventions, and we shall rearwithin the walls all the beautiful that the outside world says doesnot exist. We shall find a whole new world of those who despise thehonours and prizes of the commercial machine, and who care not forthe shows, diversions, pleasures, and gambles provided for commercialslaves. But it will not cause those of that world to falter if thegreat multitude of their fellow-men scoff at them or think that theymiss life. 

Our work is then to separate off and consecrate the beautiful, tobring the beautiful together and organise it, not renouncing themachine, but only taking from it the service necessary for ourphysical needs, in no case being ruled or guided by it or itsexigencies. When we have accomplished that, a miracle is promised. Theoutside world will take shape against our walls and receive its lifethrough our gates--it will come into relation to us even to the endsof the earth. The new heart means the salvation of all. 

With that we necessarily return to ourselves, the out-flung units ofmodern life, tramps so called, rebels, hermits, the portents of thenew era, the first signs of spring after dark winter; some of us, thepurely lyrical, spring flowers; others the prophetic and dynamic, spring winds--who blowing, shall blow upon winter, as Nietzsche says, "with a thawing wind. "

We are many: I speak for thousands who are voiceless. But we arefeeble, for we know not one another: we shall know. 

A new summer is coming and a new adventure; and summer, as all know, is the year itself, the other seasons being purely subordinate. We areas yet but February heralds. Nevertheless we ask, standing without thegates of the sleeping city of winter, "Who of ye within the city arestepping forth unto the new adventure?" Strange powers are to them;the mysterious spells of the earth, the renewal of inspiration at thelife source, the essence of new summer colours, the idea of new summershapes. To the young men and women of to-day there is a chance to beas beautiful as it is possible to be upon this little earth, a chanceto find all the significance of life and beauty that is possible forman to know, a chance to be of the same substance as the fire ofstars, a chance of perfection. It is the voice of the hermit cryingfrom the wilderness: "I have come back from God with a message and ablessing--come out ye young men and maidens, for a new season is athand. "

THE END

A TRAMP'S SKETCHES

BY

STEPHEN GRAHAM

SOME PRESS OPINIONS. 

_DAILY TELEGRAPH_. --"A deeply interesting volume that will stimulatein many readers a desire for that fuller work on his trampings whichMr. Graham promises. .. . He is gifted with rare ability to write ofthat which he has experienced. It may safely be said that few readerswould wish, after taking up this volume and reading one of thesketches at random, to put it aside without having read the rest. .. . It is always something pertinent, fresh, and interesting that thewriter has to tell us. "

_DAILY NEWS_. --"Mr. Graham has given us in this robust book a classicof educated yet wild vagabondage. "

_ACADEMY_. --"To have read _A Tramp's Sketches_ is to have been liftedinto a higher and rarer atmosphere. .. . A book that, if we mistake not, is destined to endure. "

_ENGLISH REVIEW_. --"A delightful book, redolent of the open air, ofthe night, of the great silences of expanse, and yet full of incident, of _aperçus_ into Russian conditions and the minds of peasants, revealing a real spiritual and material sympathy, both with the 'blackearth' and the monks of monasteries, whose hospitality he enjoyed, andwith his fellow-comrades of the road. It is life that interests theauthor. Here we can get it, and it is like splashing about in a clearpool on a warm summer's day, spontaneous in inspiration, mature inphilosophic contemplation. This sort of book gives a man honestpleasure. More, it sets his heart beating in unison with the author, in harmony with the awe and beauty and simplicity of Nature. "

_QUEEN_. --"The whole book is full of beautiful things. .. . Mr. Grahammay feel sure that we look forward eagerly to his next book, in whichhe promises to tell the full story of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. "

_LITERARY WORLD_. --"A book to read, to cherish, and to turn to againand again for the renewal of the moods of exaltation which it distilslike dew upon a hillside. "

_T. P. 'S WEEKLY_. --"A charming book of travel and philosophy. Thistramp is a stylist, and if you have a friend who can appreciate reallyintimate and beautiful writing, buy it, and read it carefully word byword yourself. The pages are cut, and by this means you have a fundfor reverie and talk that is not chatter. In an age of 'topics' and'masterpieces' this quiet volume is the more delightful. "

_GLOBE_. --"Of the true vagabond spirit Mr. Graham possesses avery abundant share, and it is this sheer delight in tramping fortramping's sake--the only real joy of living--that, visible in everyword he writes, makes his book so fascinating to read. "

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_. 

WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM

With 38 Illustrations from Photographs by the Author, and a Map. 8vo.