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PAGAN PAPERSby Kenneth Grahame

The Romance of the Road

Among the many places of magic visited by Pantagruel and his companyduring the progress of their famous voyage, few surpass that islandwhose roads did literally ``go'' to places -- ``ou les cheminscheminent, comme animaulx'': and would-be travellers, having inquiredof the road as to its destination, and received satisfactory reply, ``se guindans'' (as the old book hath it -- hoisting themselves up on)``au chemin opportun, sans aultrement se poiner ou fatiguer, setrouvoyent au lieu destiné. ''

The best example I know of an approach to this excellent sort ofvitality in roads is the Ridgeway of the North Berkshire Downs. Joinit at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames; at once itstrikes you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid, purposeful manner, running along the highest ridge of the Downs abroad green ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference from theneighbouring grass, yet distinct for all that. No villages norhomesteads tempt it aside or modify its course for a yard; should youlose the track where it is blent with the bordering turf or merged inand obliterated by criss-cross paths, you have only to walk straighton, taking heed of no alternative to right or left; and in a minute'tis with you again -- arisen out of the earth as it were. Or, ifstill not quite assured, lift you your eyes, and there it runs overthe brow of the fronting hill. Where a railway crosses it, itdisappears indeed -- hiding Alpheus-like, from the ignominy of rubbleand brick-work; but a little way on it takes up the running again withthe same quiet persistence. Out on that almost trackless expanse ofbillowy Downs such a track is in some sort humanly companionable: itreally seems to lead you by the hand. 

The ``Rudge'' is of course an exceptional instance; but indeed thispleasant personality in roads is not entirely fanciful. It exists as acharacteristic of the old country road, evolved out of the primitiveprehistoric track, developing according to the needs of the land itpasses through and serves: with a language, accordingly, and a meaningof its own. Its special services are often told clearly enough; butmuch else too of the quiet story of the country-side: something of theold tale whereof you learn so little from the printed page. Each isinstinct, perhaps, with a separate suggestion. Some are martial andhistoric, and by your side the hurrying feet of the dead raise aghostly dust. The name of yon town -- with its Roman or Saxon suffixto British root -- hints at much. Many a strong man, wanting his vatessacer, passed silently to Hades for that suffix to obtain. The littlerise up yonder on the Downs that breaks their straight green lineagainst the sky showed another sight when the sea of battle surged andbeat on its trampled sides; and the Roman, sore beset, may have gazeddown this very road for relief, praying for night or the succouringlegion. This child that swings on a gate and peeps at you from underher sun-bonnet -- so may some girl-ancestress of hers have watchedwith beating heart the Wessex levies hurry along to clash with theheathen and break them on the down where the ash trees grew. Andyonder, where the road swings round under gloomy overgrowth ofdrooping boughs -- is that gleam of water or glitter of lurkingspears?

Some sing you pastorals, fluting low in the hot sun between dustyhedges overlooked by contented cows; past farmsteads where man andbeast, living in frank fellowship, learn pleasant and serviceablelessons each of the other; over the full-fed river, lipping themeadow-sweet, and thence on either side through leagues of hay. Orthrough bending corn they chant the mystical wonderful song of thereaper when the harvest is white to the sickle. But most of them, avoiding classification, keep each his several tender significance; aswith one I know, not so far from town, which woos you from the valleyby gentle ascent between nut-laden hedges, and ever by some touch ofkeen fragrance in the air, by some mystery of added softness underfoot -- ever a promise of something to come, unguessed, delighting. Till suddenly you are among the pines, their keen scent strikes youthrough and through, their needles carpet the ground, and in theirswaying tops moans the unappeasable wind -- sad, ceaseless, as the cryof a warped humanity. Some paces more, and the promise is fulfilled, the hints and whisperings become fruition: the ground breaks steeplyaway, and you look over a great inland sea of fields, homesteads, rolling woodland, and -- bounding all, blent with the horizon, agreyness, a gleam -- the English Channel. A road of promises, ofhinted surprises, following each other with the inevitable sequence ina melody. 

But we are now in another and stricter sense an island of chemins quicheminent: dominated, indeed, by them. By these the traveller, veritably se guindans, may reach his destination ``sans se poiner ouse fatiguer'' (with large qualifications); but sans very much elsewhereof he were none the worse. The gain seems so obvious that youforget to miss all that lay between the springing stride of the earlystart and the pleasant weariness of the end approached, when the limbslag a little as the lights of your destination begin to glimmerthrough the dusk. All that lay between! ``A Day's Ride a Life'sRomance'' was the excellent title of an unsuccessful book; and indeedthe journey should march with the day, beginning and ending with itssun, to be the complete thing, the golden round, required of it. Thismakes that mind and body fare together, hand in hand, sharing thehope, the action, the fruition; finding equal sweetness in the languorof aching limbs at eve and in the first god-like intoxication ofmotion with braced muscle in the sun. For walk or ride take the mindover greater distances than a throbbing whirl with stiffening jointsand cramped limbs through a dozen counties. Surely you seem to covervaster spaces with Lavengro, footing it with gipsies or driving histinker's cart across lonely commons, than with many a globe-trotter orsteam-yachtsman with diary or log? And even that dividing line --strictly marked and rarely overstepped -- between the man who bicyclesand the man who walks, is less due to a prudent regard for personalsafety of the one part than to an essential difference in minds. 

There is a certain supernal, a deific, state of mind which may indeedbe experienced in a minor degree, by any one, in the siesta part of aTurkish bath. But this particular golden glow of the faculties is onlyfelt at its fulness after severe and prolonged exertion in the openair. ``A man ought to be seen by the gods, '' says Marcus Aurelius, ``neither dissatisfied with anything, nor complaining. '' Though thisdoes not sound at first hearing an excessive demand to make ofhumanity, yet the gods, I fancy, look long and often for such a sightin these unblest days of hurry. If ever seen at all, 'tis when aftermany a mile in sun and wind -- maybe rain -- you reach at last, withthe folding star, your destined rustic inn. There, in its homely, comfortable strangeness, after unnumbered chops with country ale, thehard facts of life begin to swim in a golden mist. You are isled fromaccustomed cares and worries -- you are set in a peculiar nook ofrest. Then old failures seem partial successes, then old loves comeback in their fairest form, but this time with never a shadow ofregret, then old jokes renew their youth and flavour. You ask nothingof the gods above, nothing of men below -- not even their company. To-morrow you shall begin life again: shall write your book, make yourfortune, do anything; meanwhile you sit, and the jolly world swingsround, and you seem to hear it circle to the music of the spheres. What pipe was ever thus beatifying in effect? You are aching all over, and enjoying it; and the scent of the limes drifts in through thewindow. This is undoubtedly the best and greatest country in theworld; and none but good fellows abide in it. 

 Laud we the Gods, And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils From our blest altars. The Romance of the Rail

In these iron days of the dominance of steam, the crowning wrong thatis wrought us of furnace and piston-rod lies in their annihilation ofthe steadfast mystery of the horizon, so that the imagination nolonger begins to work at the point where vision ceases. In happiertimes, three hundred years ago, the seafarers from Bristol City lookedout from the prows of their vessels in the grey of the morning, andwot not rightly whether the land they saw might be Jerusalem orMadagascar, or if it were not North and South America. ``And there becertaine flitting islands, '' says one, ``which have been oftentimesseene, and when men approached near them they vanished. '' ``It may bethat the gulfs will wash us down, '' said Ulysses (thinking of whatAmericans call the ``getting-off place''); ``it may be we shall touchthe Happy Isles. '' And so on, and so on; each with his special hope or``wild surmise. '' There was always a chance of touching the HappyIsles. And in that first fair world whose men and manners we knewthrough story-books, before experience taught us far other, the Princemounts his horse one fine morning, and rides all day, and sleeps in aforest; and next morning, lo! a new country: and he rides by fieldsand granges never visited before, through faces strange to him, towhere an unknown King steps down to welcome the mysterious stranger. And he marries the Princess, and dwells content for many a year; tillone day he thinks ``I will look upon my father's face again, thoughthe leagues be long to my own land. '' And he rides all day, and sleepsin a forest; and next morning he is made welcome at home, where hisname has become a dim memory. Which is all as it should be; for, annihilate time and space as you may, a man's stride remains the truestandard of distance; an eternal and unalterable scale. The severehorizon, too, repels the thoughts as you gaze to the infiniteconsiderations that lie about, within touch and hail; and the nightcometh, when no man can work. 

To all these natural bounds and limitations it is good to get back nowand again, from a life assisted and smooth by artificialities. Whereiron has superseded muscle, the kindly life-blood is apt to throb dullas the measured beat of the steam-engine. But the getting back to themis now a matter of effort, of set purpose, a stepping aside out of ourordinary course; they are no longer unsought influences towards themaking of character. So perhaps the time of them has gone by, here inthis second generation of steam. Pereunt et imputantur; they passaway, and are scored against not us but our guilty fathers. Forourselves, our peculiar slate is probably filling fast. The romance ofthe steam-engine is yet to be captured and expressed -- not fully norworthily, perhaps, until it too is a vanished regret; though Emersonfor one will not have it so, and maintains and justifies its right toimmediate recognition as poetic material. ``For as it is dislocationand detachment from the life of God that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to Nature and the whole -- re-attaching evenartificial things and violations of Nature to Nature by a deeperinsight -- disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts''; sothat he looks upon ``the factory village and the railway'' and ``seesthem fall within the great Order not less than the bee-hive or thespider's geometrical web. '' The poet, however, seems hard to convincehereof. Emerson will have it that ``Nature loves the gliding train ofcars''; ``instead of which'' the poet still goes about the countrysinging purling brooks. Painters have been more flexible and liberal. Turner saw and did his best to seize the spirit of the thing, itskinship with the elements, and to blend furnace-glare and rush of ironwith the storm-shower, the wind and the thwart-flashing sun-rays, andto make the whole a single expression of irresoluble force. And evenin a certain work by another and a very different painter -- though Iwillingly acquit Mr Frith of any deliberate romantic intention -- youshall find the element of romance in the vestiges of the old orderstill lingering in the first transition period: the coach-shapedrailway carriages with luggage piled and corded on top, the red-coatedguard, the little engine tethered well ahead as if between traces. Tothose bred within sight of the sea, steamers will always partake insomewhat of the ``beauty and mystery of the ships''; above all, iftheir happy childhood have lain among the gleaming lochs and sinuousfirths of the Western Highlands, where, twice a week maybe, thestrange visitant crept by headland and bay, a piece of the busy, mysterious outer world. For myself, I probably stand alone in owningto a sentimental weakness for the night-piercing whistle --judiciously remote, as some men love the skirl of the pipes. In thedays when streets were less wearily familiar than now, or ever thegolden cord was quite loosed that led back to relinquished fields andwider skies, I have lain awake on stifling summer nights, thinking ofluckier friends by moor and stream, and listening for the whistlesfrom certain railway stations, veritable ``horns of Elf-land, faintlyblowing. '' Then, a ghostly passenger, I have taken my seat in aphantom train, and sped up, up, through the map, rehearsing thejourney bit by bit: through the furnace-lit Midlands, and on till thegrey glimmer of dawn showed stone walls in place of hedges, and masseslooming up on either side; till the bright sun shone upon brownleaping streams and purple heather, and the clear, sharp northern airstreamed in through the windows. Return, indeed, was bitter;Endymion-like, ``my first touch of the earth went nigh to kill'': butit was only to hurry northwards again on the wings of imagination, from dust and heat to the dear mountain air. ``We are only thechildren who might have been, '' murmured Lamb's dream babes to him;and for the sake of those dream-journeys, the journeys that might havebeen, I still hail with a certain affection the call of the engine inthe night: even as I love sometimes to turn the enchanted pages of therailway a b c, and pass from one to the other name reminiscent orsuggestive of joy and freedom, Devonian maybe, or savouring of Wessex, or bearing me away to some sequestered reach of the quiet Thames. 

Non Libri Sed Liberi

It will never be clear to the lay mind why the book-buyer buys books. That it is not to read them is certain: the closest inspection alwaysfails to find him thus engaged. He will talk about them -- all nightif you let him -- wave his hand to them, shake his fist at them, shedtears over them (in the small hours of the morning); but he will notread them. Yet it would be rash to infer that he buys his bookswithout a remote intention of ever reading them. Most book loversstart with the honest resolution that some day they will ``shut downon'' this fatal practice. Then they purpose to themselves to enterinto their charmed circle, and close the gates of Paradise behindthem. Then will they read out of nothing but first editions; every dayshall be a debauch in large paper and tall copies; and crushed moroccoshall be familiar to their touch as buckram. Meanwhile, though, bookscontinue to flaunt their venal charms; it would be cowardice to shunthe fray. In fine, one buys and continues to buy; and the promisedSabbath never comes. 

The process of the purchase is always much the same, thereinresembling the familiar but inferior passion of love. There is thefirst sight of the Object, accompanied of a catching of the breath, atrembling in the limbs, loss of appetite, ungovernable desire, and ahabit of melancholy in secret places. But once possessed, once toyedwith amorously for an hour or two, the Object (as in the inferiorpassion aforesaid) takes its destined place on the shelf -- where itstays. And this saith the scoffer, is all; but even he does not failto remark with a certain awe that the owner goeth thereafter as onepossessing a happy secret and radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he isinsufferably conceited, and his conceit waxeth as his coat, nowcondemned to a fresh term of servitude, groweth shabbier. And shabbythough his coat may be, yet will he never stoop to renew its pristineyouth and gloss by the price of any book. No man -- no human, masculine, natural man -- ever sells a book. Men have been known inmoments of thoughtlessness, or compelled by temporary necessity, torob, to equivocate, to do murder, to commit what they should not, to``wince and relent and refrain'' from what they should: these things, howbeit regrettable, are common to humanity, and may happen to any ofus. But amateur bookselling is foul and unnatural; and it isnoteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity, contains nodistinctive name for the crime. Fortunately it is hardly known toexist: the face of the public being set against it as a flint -- andthe trade giving such wretched prices. 

In book-buying you not infrequently condone an extravagance by thereflection that this particular purchase will be a good investment, sordidly considered: that you are not squandering income but sinkingcapital. But you know all the time that you are lying. Once possessed, books develop a personality: they take on a touch of warm human lifethat links them in a manner with our kith and kin. Non angli sedAngeli was the comment of a missionary (old style) on the small humanduodecimos exposed for sale in the Roman market-place; and many abuyer, when some fair-haired little chattel passed into hispossession, must have felt that here was something vendible no more. So of these you may well affirm Non libri sed liberi; children now, adopted into the circle, they shall be trafficked in never again. 

There is one exception which has sadly to be made -- one class of men, of whom I would fain, if possible, have avoided mention, who arestrangers to any such scruples. These be Executors -- a word to bestrongly accented on the penultimate; for, indeed, they are the commonheadsmen of collections, and most of all do whet their bloody edge forharmless books. Hoary, famous old collections, budding youngcollections, fair virgin collections of a single author -- all go downbefore the executor's remorseless axe. He careth not and he sparethnot. ``The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, '' and itis chiefly by the hand of the executor that she doth love to scatterit. May oblivion be his portion for ever!

Of a truth, the foes of the book-lover are not few. One of the mostinsidious, because he cometh at first in friendly, helpful guise, isthe bookbinder. Not in that he bindeth books -- for the fair bindingis the final crown and flower of painful achievement -- but because hebindeth not: because the weary weeks lapse by and turn to months, andthe months to years, and still the binder bindeth not: and the heartgrows sick with hope deferred. Each morn the maiden binds her hair, each spring the honeysuckle binds the cottage-porch, each autumn theharvester binds his sheaves, each winter the iron frost binds lake andstream, and still the bookbinder he bindeth not. Then a secret voicewhispereth: ``Arise, be a man, and slay him! Take him grossly, full ofbread, with all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May; At gaming, swearing, or about some act That hath no relish of salvation in it!''But when the deed is done, and the floor strewn with fragments ofbinder -- still the books remain unbound. You have made all thathorrid mess for nothing, and the weary path has to be trodden overagain. As a general rule, the man in the habit of murderingbookbinders, though he performs a distinct service to society, onlywastes his own time and takes no personal advantage. 

And even supposing that after many days your books return to you inleathern surcoats bravely tricked with gold, you have scarce yetweathered the Cape and sailed into halcyon seas. For these books --well, you kept them many weeks before binding them, that theoleaginous printer's-ink might fully dry before the necessaryhammering; you forbore to open the pages, that the autocratic bindermight refold the sheets if he pleased; and now that all is over --consummatum est -- still you cannot properly enjoy the harvest of aquiet mind. For these purple emperors are not to be read in bed, norduring meals, nor on the grass with a pipe on Sundays; and these briefperiods are all the whirling times allow you for solid seriousreading. Still, after all, you have them; you can at least pulveriseyour friends with the sight; and what have they to show against them?Probably some miserable score or so of half-bindings, such as lead youscornfully to quote the hackneyed couplet concerning the poor Indianwhose untutored mind clothes him before but leaves him bare behind. Let us thank the gods that such things are: that to some of us theygive not poverty nor riches but a few good books in whole bindings. Dowered with these and (if it be vouchsafed) a cup of Burgundy that issound even if it be not old, we can leave to others the foaming grapeof Eastern France that was vintaged in '74, and with it the wholerange of shilling shockers, -- the Barmecidal feast of the purposefulnovelist -- yea, even the countless series that tell of Eminent Womenand Successful Men. 

Loafing

When the golden Summer has rounded languidly to his close, when Autumnhas been carried forth in russet winding-sheet, then all good fellowswho look upon holidays as a chief end of life return from moor andstream and begin to take stock of gains and losses. And the wisest, realising that the time of action is over while that of reminiscencehas begun, realise too that the one is pregnant with greater pleasuresthan the other -- that action, indeed, is only the means to an end ofreflection and appreciation. Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apartsupreme. For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, goesstraight to it at once; and his happy summer has accordingly beenspent in those subjective pleasures of the mind whereof the others, the men of muscle and peeled faces, are only just beginning to taste. 

And yet though he may a little despise (or rather pity) them, theLoafer does not dislike nor altogether shun them. Far from it: theyare very necessary to him. For ``Suave mari magno'' is the motto ofyour true Loafer; and it is chiefly by keeping ever in view thestruggles and the clamorous jostlings of the unenlightened makingholiday that he is able to realise the bliss of his own condition andmaintain his self-satisfaction at boiling-point. And so is he neververy far away from the track beaten by the hurrying Philistine hoof, but hovers more or less on the edge of it, where, the sole fixed staramidst whirling constellations, he may watch the mad world ``glance, and nod, and hurry by. ''

There are many such centres of contemplation along the West Coast ofScotland. Few places are better loafing-ground than a pier, with itstranquil ``lucid interval'' between steamers, the ever recurrent throbof paddle-wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water among the piles, splash of ropes and rumble of gangways, and all the attendant hurryand scurry of the human morrice. Here, tanquam in speculo, the Loaferas he lounges may, by attorney as it were, touch gently every stop inthe great organ of the emotions of mortality. Rapture of meeting, departing woe, love at first sight, disdain, laughter, indifference --he may experience them all, but attenuated and as if he saw them in adream; as if, indeed, he were Heine's god in dream on a mountain-side. Let the drowsy deity awake and all these puppets, emanations of hisdream, will vanish into the nothing whence they came. And theseemotions may be renewed each morning; if a fair one sail to-day, besure that one as fair will land to-morrow. The supply isinexhaustible. 

But in the South perhaps the happiest loafing-ground is the gift ofFather Thames; for there again the contrast of violent action, withits blisters, perspiration, and the like, throws into fine relief thebliss of ``quietism. '' I know one little village in the upper reacheswhere loafing may be pushed to high perfection. Here the early hoursof the morning are vexed by the voices of boaters making their waydown the little street to the river. The most of them go staggeringunder hampers, bundles of waterproofs, and so forth. Their voices areclamant of feats to be accomplished: they will row, they will punt, they will paddle, till they weary out the sun. All this the Loaferhears through the open door of his cottage, where in his shirt-sleeveshe is dallying with his bacon, as a gentleman should. He is the onlyone who has had a comfortable breakfast -- and he knows it. Later hewill issue forth and stroll down in their track to the bridge. Thelast of these Argonauts is pulling lustily forth; the river is dottedwith evanishing blazers. Upon all these lunatics a pitiless Phoebusshines triumphant. The Loafer sees the last of them off the stage, turns his back on it, and seeks the shady side of the street. 

A holy calm possesses the village now; the foreign element has passedaway with shouting and waving of banners, and its natural life ofsomnolency is in evidence at last. And first, as a true Loafer should, let him respectfully greet each several village dog. Arcades ambo --loafers likewise -- they lie there in the warm dust, each outside hisown door, ready to return the smallest courtesy. Their own lords andmasters are not given to the exchange of compliments nor to greetingsin the market-place. The dog is generally the better gentleman, and heis aware of it; and he duly appreciates the loafer, who is not tooproud to pause a moment, change the news, and pass the time of day. Hewill mark his sense of this attention by rising from his dust-divanand accompanying his caller some steps on his way. But he will stopshort of his neighbour's dust-patch; for the morning is really too hotfor a shindy. So, by easy stages (the street is not a long one: sixdogs will see it out), the Loafer quits the village; and now the worldis before him. Shall he sit on a gate and smoke? or lie on the grassand smoke? or smoke aimlessly and at large along the road? Such achoice of happiness is distracting; but perhaps the last course is thebest -- as needing the least mental effort of selection. Hardly, however, has he fairly started his first daydream when the snappish``ting'' of a bellkin recalls him to realities. By comes thebicyclist: dusty, sweating, a piteous thing to look upon. But theirritation of the strepitant metal has jarred the Loafer's alwaysexquisite nerves: he is fain to climb a gate and make his way towardssolitude and the breezy downs. 

Up here all vestiges of a sordid humanity disappear. The Loafer isalone with the south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling oflarks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noondaystillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on theblue. Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the sky, his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges atwill among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earthno longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or sobelow him the thing still ``spins like a fretful midge. '' The Loaferknows not nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through goldenspaces of imagination his soul is winging her untrammelled flight. Andthere he really might remain for ever, but that his vagrom spirit iscalled back to earth by a gentle but resistless, very human summons, -- a gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian, god-like, thirst: a thirst tothank Heaven on. So, with a sigh half of regret, half of anticipation, he bends his solitary steps towards the nearest inn. Tobacco for oneis good; to commune with oneself and be still is truest wisdom; butbeer is a thing of deity -- beer is divine. 

Later the Loafer may decently make some concession to popular taste bystrolling down to the river and getting out his boat. With one paddleout he will drift down the stream: just brushing the flowering rushand the meadow-sweet and taking in as peculiar gifts the varied sweetsof even. The loosestrife is his, and the arrow-head: his the distantmoan of the weir; his are the glories, amber and scarlet and silver, of the sunset-haunted surface. By-and-by the boaters will pass himhomeward-bound. All are blistered and sore: his withers are unwrung. Most are too tired and hungry to see the sunset glories; no corporealpangs clog his æsthesis -- his perceptive faculty. Some havequarrelled in the day and are no longer on speaking terms; he is atpeace with himself and with the whole world. Of all that lay them downin the little village that night, his sleep will be the surest and thesweetest. For not even the blacksmith himself will have better claimto have earned a night's repose. 

Cheap Knowledge

When at times it happens to me that I 'gin to be aweary of the sun, and to find the fair apple of life dust and ashes at the core -- justbecause, perhaps, I can't afford Melampus Brown's last volume of poemsin large paper, but must perforce condescend upon the two-and-sixpennyedition for the million -- then I bring myself to a right temper byrecalling to memory a sight which now and again in old days wouldtouch the heart of me to a happier pulsation. In the long, dark winterevenings, outside some shop window whose gaslight flared brightestinto the chilly street, I would see some lad -- sometimes even a girl-- book in hand, heedless of cold and wet, of aching limbs andstraining eyes, careless of jostling passers-by, of rattle and turmoilbehind them and about, their happy spirits far in an enchanted world:till the ruthless shopman turned out the gas and brought them rudelyback to the bitter reality of cramped legs and numbed fingers. ``Mybrother!'' or ``My sister!'' I would cry inwardly, feeling the linkthat bound us together. They possessed, for the hour, the two giftsmost precious to the student -- light and solitude: the true solitudeof the roaring street. 

Somehow this vision rarely greets me now. Probably the Free Librarieshave supplanted the flickering shop lights; and every lad and lass canenter and call for Miss Braddon and batten thereon ``in luxury'ssofa-lap of leather''; and of course this boon is appreciated andprofited by, and we shall see the divine results in a year or two. Andyet sometimes, like the dear old Baron in the ``Red Lamp, '' ``Iwonder?''

For myself, public libraries possess a special horror, as of lonelywastes and dragon-haunted fens. The stillness and the heavy air, thefeeling of restriction and surveillance, the mute presence of theseother readers, ``all silent and all damned, '' combine to set up anervous irritation fatal to quiet study. Had I to choose, I wouldprefer the windy street. And possibly others have found that theremoval of checks and obstacles makes the path which leads to thedivine mountain-tops less tempting, now that it is less rugged. Sofull of human nature are we all -- still -- despite the Radicalmissionaries that labour in the vineyard. Before the National Gallerywas extended and rearranged, there was a little ``St Catherine'' byPinturicchio that possessed my undivided affections. In those days shehung near the floor, so that those who would worship must grovel; andlittle I grudged it. Whenever I found myself near Trafalgar Squarewith five minutes to spare I used to turn in and sit on the floorbefore the object of my love, till gently but firmly replaced on mylegs by the attendant. She hangs on the line now, in the grand newroom; but I never go to see her. Somehow she is not my ``StCatherine'' of old. Doubtless Free Libraries affect many students inthe same way: on the same principle as that now generally accepted --that it is the restrictions placed on vice by our social code whichmake its pursuit so peculiarly agreeable. 

But even when the element of human nature has been fully allowed for, it remains a question whether the type of mind that a generation ortwo of Free Libraries will evolve is or is not the one that the worldmost desiderates; and whether the spare reading and consequent fertilethinking necessitated by the old, or gas-lamp, style is not productiveof sounder results. The cloyed and congested mind resulting from thefree run of these grocers' shops to omnivorous appetites (and allyoung readers are omnivorous) bids fair to produce a race of literaryresurrection-men: a result from which we may well pray to be spared. Of all forms of lettered effusiveness that which exploits the originalwork of others and professes to supply us with right opinionsthereanent is the least wanted. And whether he take to literaryexpression by pen or only wag the tongue of him, the grocer's boy ofletters is sure to prove a prodigious bore. The Free Library, if it befulfilling the programme of its advocates, is breeding such as he byscores. 

But after all there is balm in Gilead; and much joy and consolationmay be drawn from the sorrowful official reports, by which it wouldappear that the patrons of these libraries are confining theirreading, with a charming unanimity, exclusively to novels. And indeedthey cannot do better; there is no more blessed thing on earth than agood novel, not the least merit of which is that it induces a state ofpassive, unconscious enjoyment, and never frenzies the reader to goout and put the world right. Next to fairy tales -- the originalworld-fiction -- our modern novels may be ranked as our most preciouspossessions; and so it has come to pass that I shall now cheerfullypay my five shillings, or ten shillings, or whatever it may shortlybe, in the pound towards the Free Library: convinced at last that themoney is not wasted in training exponents of the subjectivity of thiswriter and the objectivity of that, nor in developing fresh imitatorsof dead discredited styles, but is righteously devoted to the supportof wholesome, honest, unpretending novel-reading. 

The Rural Pan

An April Essay

Through shady Throgmorton Street and about the vale of Cheapside therestless Mercury is flitting, with furtive eye and voice a littlehoarse from bidding in the market. Further west, down classicPiccadilly, moves the young Apollo, the lord of the unerring (satin)bow; and nothing meaner than a frock-coat shall in these latter yearsfloat round his perfect limbs. But remote in other haunts than thesethe rural Pan is hiding, and piping the low, sweet strain that reachesonly the ears of a chosen few. And now that the year wearily turns andstretches herself before the perfect waking, the god emboldened beginsto blow a clearer note. 

When the waking comes at last, and Summer is abroad, these deitieswill abroad too, each as his several attributes move him. Who is thisthat flieth up the reaches of the Thames in steam-launch hired for theday? Mercury is out -- some dozen or fifteen strong. The flower-gemmedbanks crumble and slide down under the wash of his rampant screw; hiswake is marked by a line of lobster-claws, gold-necked bottles, andfragments of veal-pie. Resplendent in blazer, he may even be seen toembrace the slim-waisted nymph, haunter of green (room) shades, in thefull gaze of the shocked and scandalised sun. Apollo meantimereposeth, passively beautiful, on the lawn of the Guards' Club atMaidenhead. Here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee. A deitysubjectively inclined, he is neither objective nor, it must be saidfor him, at all objectionable, like them of Mercury. 

Meanwhile, nor launches nor lawns tempt him that pursueth the ruralPan. In the hushed recesses of Hurley backwater where the canoe may bepaddled almost under the tumbling comb of the weir, he is to be lookedfor; there the god pipes with freest abandonment. Or under the greatshadow of Streatley Hill, ``annihilating all that's made to a greenthought in a green shade''; or better yet, pushing an explorer's prowup the remote untravelled Thame, till Dorchester's stately roof broodsover the quiet fields. In solitudes such as these Pan sits anddabbles, and all the air is full of the music of his piping. Southwards, again, on the pleasant Surrey downs there is shouting andjostling; dust that is drouthy and language that is sultry. Thithercomes the young Apollo, calmly confident as ever; and he meetethcertain Mercuries of the baser sort, who do him obeisance, call himcaptain and lord, and then proceed to skin him from head to foot asthoroughly as the god himself flayed Marsyas in days of yore, at acertain Spring Meeting in Phrygia: a good instance of Time's revenges. And yet Apollo returns to town and swears he has had a grand day. Hedoes so every year. Out of hearing of all the clamour, the rural Panmay be found stretched on Ranmore Common, loitering under Abingerpines, or prone by the secluded stream of the sinuous Mole, aboundingin friendly greetings for his foster-brothers the dab-chick andwater-rat. 

For a holiday, Mercury loveth the Pullman Express, and a short hourwith a society paper; anon, brown boots on the pier, and the pleasantcombination of Métropole and Monopole. Apollo for his part will urgethe horses of the Sun: and, if he leaveth the society weekly toMercury, yet he loveth well the Magazine. From which omphalos or hubof the universe he will direct his shining team even to the farHesperides of Richmond or of Windsor. Both iron road and level highwayare shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses rather to foot it along thesheep track on the limitless downs or the thwart-leading footpaththrough copse and spinney, not without pleasant fellowship withfeather and fir. Nor does it follow from all this that the god isunsocial. Albeit shy of the company of his more showy brother-deities, he loveth the more unpretentious humankind, especially them that areadscripti glebæ, addicted to the kindly soil and to the workingthereof: perfect in no way, only simple, cheery sinners. For he isonly half a god after all, and the red earth in him is strong. Whenthe pelting storm drives the wayfarers to the sheltering inn, amongthe little group on bench and settle Pan has been known to appear attimes, in homely guise of hedger-and-ditcher or weather-beatenshepherd from the downs. Strange lore and quaint fancy he will thenimpart, in the musical Wessex or Mercian he has learned to speak sonaturally; though it may not be till many a mile away that you beginto suspect that you have unwittingly talked with him who chased theflying Syrinx in Arcady and turned the tide of fight at Marathon. 

Yes: to-day the iron horse has searched the country through -- eastand west, north and south -- bringing with it Commercialism, whose godis Jerry, and who studs the hills with stucco and garrotes the streamswith the girder. Bringing, too, into every nook and corner fashion andchatter, the tailor-made gown and the eyeglass. Happily a great partis still spared -- how great these others fortunately do not know --in which the rural Pan and his following may hide their heads for yeta little longer, until the growing tyranny has invaded the lastcommon, spinney, and sheep-down, and driven the kindly god, thewell-wisher to man -- whither?

Marginalia

American Hunt, in his suggestive ``Talks about Art, '' demands that thechild shall be encouraged -- or rather permitted, for the naturalchild needs little encouragement -- to draw when- and whereon-soeverhe can; for, says he, the child's scribbling on the margin of hisschool-books is really worth more to him than all he gets out of them, and indeed, ``to him the margin is the best part of all books, and hefinds in it the soothing influence of a clear sky in a landscape. ''Doubtless Sir Benjamin Backbite, though his was not an artist soul, had some dim feeling of this mighty truth when he spoke of that newquarto of his, in which ``a neat rivulet of text shall meander througha meadow of margin'': boldly granting the margin to be of superiorimportance to the print. This metaphor is pleasantly expanded inBurton's ``Bookhunter'': wherein you read of certain folios with``their majestic stream of central print overflowing into rivulets ofmarginal notes, sedgy with citations. '' But the good Doctor leaves themain stream for a backwater of error in inferring that the chief useof margins is to be a parading-ground for notes and citations. As ifthey had not absolute value in themselves, nor served a finer end! Intruth, Hunt's child was vastly the wiser man. 

For myself, my own early margins chiefly served to note, cite, andillustrate the habits of crocodiles. Along the lower or ``tail'' edge, the saurian, splendidly serrated as to his back, arose out of oldNile; up one side negroes, swart as sucked lead-pencil could limnthem, let fall their nerveless spears; up the other, monkeys, gibbering with terror, swarmed hastily up palm-trees -- a plant to theuntutored hand of easier outline than (say) your British oak. Meanwhile, all over the unregarded text Balbus slew Caius on the mostinadequate provocation, or Hannibal pursued his victorious career, while Roman generals delivered ornate set speeches prior to receivingthe usual satisfactory licking. Fabius, Hasdrubal -- all alike werepallid shades with faint, thin voices powerless to pierce thedistance. The margins of Cocytus doubtless knew them: mine werededicated to the more attractive flesh and blood of animal life, thevaried phases of the tropic forest. Or, in more practical mood, Iwould stoop to render certain facts recorded in the text. To thesedigressions I probably owe what little education I possess. Forexample, there was one sentence in our Roman history: ``By this singlebattle of Magnesia, Antiochus the Great lost all his conquests in AsiaMinor. '' Serious historians really should not thus forget themselves. 'Twas so easy, by a touch of the pen, to transform ``battle'' into``bottle''; for ``conquests'' one could substitute a word for whichnot even Macaulay's school-boy were at a loss; and the result, depicted with rude vigour in his margin, fixed the name of at leastone ancient fight on the illustrator's memory. But this plodding andmaterial art had small charm for me: to whom the happy margin was a``clear sky'' ever through which I could sail away at will to moregracious worlds. I was duly qualified by a painfully acquiredignorance of dead languages cautiously to approach my own; and 'twasno better. Along Milton's margins the Gryphon must needs pursue theArimaspian -- what a chance, that Arimaspian, for the imaginativepencil! And so it has come about that, while Milton periods are mostlyeffaced from memory by the sponge of Time, I can still see thatvengeful Gryphon, cousin-german to the gentle beast that danced theLobster Quadrille by a certain shore. 

It is by no means insisted upon that the chief end and use of marginsis for pictorial illustration, nor yet for furtive games of oughts andcrosses, nor (in the case of hymn-books) for amorous missives scrawledagainst the canticle for the day, to be passed over into an adjacentpew: as used, alas! to happen in days when one was young and godless, and went to church. Nor, again, are the margins of certain poetsentrusted to man for the composing thereon of infinitely superiorrhymes on the subjects themselves have maltreated: a depraved habit, akin to scalping. What has never been properly recognised is theabsolute value of the margin itself -- a value frequently superior toits enclosure. In poetry the popular taste demands its margin, andtakes care to get it in ``the little verses wot they puts inside thecrackers. '' The special popularity, indeed, of lyric as opposed toepic verse is due to this habit of feeling. A good example maybe foundin the work of Mr Swinburne: the latter is the better poetry, theearlier remains the more popular -- because of its eloquence ofmargin. Mr Tupper might long ago have sat with laureate brow but forhis neglect of this first principle. The song of Sigurd, our one epicof the century, is pitiably unmargined, and so has never won the fullmeed of glory it deserves; while the ingenious gentleman who wrote``Beowulf, '' our other English epic, grasped the great fact from thefirst, so that his work is much the more popular of the two. The moralis evident. An authority on practical book-making has stated that``margin is a matter to be studied''; also that ``to place the printin the centre of the paper is wrong in principle, and to bedeprecated. '' Now, if it be ``wrong in principle, '' let us push thatprinciple to its legitimate conclusion, and ``deprecate'' the placingof print on any part of the paper at all. Without actually suggestingthis course to any of our living bards, when, I may ask -- when shallthat true poet arise who, disdaining the trivialities of text, shallgive the world a book of verse consisting entirely of margin? How weshall shove and jostle for large paper copies!

The Eternal Whither

There was once an old cashier in some ancient City establishment, whose practice was to spend his yearly holiday in relieving someturnpike-man at his post, and performing all the duties appertainingthereunto. This was vulgarly taken to be an instance of meremill-horse enslavement to his groove -- the reception of payments; andit was spoken of both in mockery of all mill-horses and for the dueadmonishment of others. And yet that clerk had discovered for himselfan unique method of seeing Life at its best, the flowing, hurrying, travelling, marketing Life of the Highway; the life of bagman andcart, of tinker, and pig-dealer, and all cheery creatures that drinkand chaffer together in the sun. He belonged, above all, to the scantyclass of clear-seeing persons who know both what they are good for andwhat they really want. To know what you would like to do is one thing;to go out boldly and do it is another -- and a rarer; and the sterilefields about Hell-Gate are strewn with the corpses of those who wouldan if they could. 

To be sure, being bent on the relaxation most congenial to one's soul, it is possible to push one's disregard for convention too far: as isseen in the case of another, though of an earlier generation, in thesame establishment. In his office there was the customary``attendance-book, '' wherein the clerks were expected to sign eachday. Here his name one morning ceases abruptly from appearing; hesigns, indeed, no more. Instead of signature you find, a little later, writ in careful commercial hand, this entry: ``Mr --- did not attendat his office to-day, having been hanged at eight o'clock in themorning for horse-stealing. '' Through the faded ink of this record doyou not seem to catch, across the gulf of years, some waft of thejolly humanity which breathed in this prince among clerks? A formalprecisian, doubtless, during business hours; but with just this honestlove of horseflesh lurking deep down there in him -- unsuspected, sweetening the whole lump. Can you not behold him, freed from hisdesk, turning to pursue his natural bent, as a city-bred dog stillstriveth to bury his bone deep in the hearth-rug? For no filthy lucre, you may be sure, but from sheer love of the pursuit itself! All thesame, he erred; erred, if not in taste, at least in judgment: for wecannot entirely acquit him of blame for letting himself be caught. 

In these tame and tedious days of the policeman rampant, ourmelancholy selves are debarred from many a sport, joyous and debonair, whereof our happier fathers were free. Book-stealing, to be sure, remains to us; but every one is not a collector; and, besides, 'tis adiversion you can follow with equal success all the year round. Still, the instance may haply be pregnant with suggestion to many who wearilyask each year, what new place or pursuit exhausted earth still keepsfor the holiday-maker. 'Tis a sad but sober fact, that the most of menlead flat and virtuous lives, departing annually with their family tosome flat and virtuous place, there to disport themselves in a mannerthat is decent, orderly, wholly uninteresting, vacant of every buxomstimulus. To such as these a suggestion, in all friendliness: why nottry crime? We shall not attempt to specify the particular branch --for every one must himself seek out and find the path his nature bestfits him to follow; but the general charm of the prospect must beevident to all. The freshness and novelty of secrecy, the artisticsatisfaction in doing the act of self-expression as well as it canpossibly be done; the experience of being not the hunter, but thehunted, not the sportsman, but the game; the delight of comparing anddiscussing crimes with your mates over a quiet pipe on your return totown; these new pleasures -- these and their like -- would furnishjust that gentle stimulant, that peaceful sense of change so necessaryto the tired worker. And then the fact, that you would naturally haveto select and plan out your particular line of diversion withoutadvice or assistance, has its own advantage. For the moment a mantakes to dinning in your ears that you ought, you really ought, to goto Norway, you at once begin to hate Norway with a hate that ever willbe; and to have Newlyn, Cromer, or Dawlish, Carinthia or the AustrianTyrol jammed down your throat, is enough to initiate the discoverythat your own individual weakness is a joyous and persistent likingfor manslaughter. 

Some few seem to be born without much innate tendency to crime. Afterall, it is mostly a matter of heredity; these unfortunates are lessculpable than their neglectful ancestors; and it is a fault that noneneed really blush for in the present. For such as they there stillremains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its goldenpossibilities. Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or afire-engine -- whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar -- what bliss to the palefacedquilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge andChelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at sixpence a head!Though turnpikes be things of the past, there are still tolls to betaken on many a pleasant reach of Thames. What happiness in quietmoments to tend the lock-keeper's flower-beds -- perhaps make love tohis daughter; anon in busier times to let the old gates swing, workthe groaning winches, and hear the water lap and suck and gurgle as itslowly sinks or rises with its swaying freight; to dangle legs overthe side and greet old acquaintances here and there among theparti-coloured wayfarers passing up or down; while tobacco palleth noton the longest day, and beer is ever within easy reach. The irontetter that scurfs the face of our island has killed out the pleasantlife of the road; but many of its best conditions still linger roundthese old toll gates, free from dust and clatter, on the silent liquidHighway to the West. 

These for the weaker brethren: but for him who is conscious of theGift, the path is plain. 

Deus Terminus

The practical Roman, stern constructor of roads and codes, when heneeds must worship, loved a deity practical as himself; and in hisparcelling of the known world into plots, saying unto this man, Bidehere, and to that, Sit you down there, he could scarce fail to evolvethe god Terminus: visible witness of possession and dominion, type ofsolid facts not to be quibbled away. We Romans of this latter day --so hailed by others, or complacently christened by ourselves -- areRoman in nothing more than in this; and, as much in the less tangiblerealms of thought as in our solid acres, we are fain to set up thestatue which shall proclaim that so much country is explored, markedout, allotted, and done with; that such and such ramblings andexcursions are practicable and permissible, and all else is exploded, illegal, or absurd. And in this way we are left with naught but avague lingering tradition of the happier days before the advent of theruthless deity. 

The sylvan glories of yonder stretch of woodland renew themselves eachautumn, regal as ever. It is only the old enchantment that is gone;banished by the matter-of-fact deity, who has stolidly settled exactlywhere Lord A. 's shooting ends and Squire B. 's begins. Once, no suchpetty limitations fettered the mind. A step into the woodland was astep over the border -- the margin of the material; and then, good-byeto the modern world of the land-agent and the ``Field'' advertisement!A chiming of little bells over your head, and lo! the peregrine, witheyes like jewels, fluttered through the trees, her jesses catching inthe boughs. 'Twas the favourite of the Princess, the windows of whosefather's castle already gleamed through the trees, where honours andfavours awaited the adventurous. The white doe sprang away through thethicket, her snowy flank stained with blood; she made for theenchanted cot, and for entrance you too had the pass-word. Did youfail on her traces, nor fox nor mole was too busy to spare a momentfor friendly advice or information. Little hands were stretched totrip you, fairy gibe and mockery pelted you from every rabbit-hole;and O what Dryads you have kissed among the leaves, in that briefblissful moment ere they hardened into tree! 'Tis pity, indeed, thatthis sort of thing should have been made to share the suspicionattaching to the poacher; that the stony stare of the boundary godshould confront you at the end of every green ride and rabbit-run;while the very rabbits themselves are too disgusted with the alteredcircumstances to tarry a moment for so much as to exchange the time ofday. 

Truly this age is born, like Falstaff, with a white head and somethinga round belly: and will none of your jigs and fantasies. The goldenera of princesses is past. For your really virtuous 'prentices therestill remain a merchant's daughter or two, and a bottle of port o'Sundays on the Clapham mahogany. For the rest of us, one or two decentclubs, and plenty of nice roomy lunatic asylums. ``Go spin, you jade, go spin!'' is the one greeting for Imagination. And yet -- what a lipthe slut has! What an ankle! Go to: there's nobody looking; let uslock the door, pull down the blinds, and write us a merry ballad. 

'Tis ungracious, perhaps, to regret what is gone for ever, when somuch is given in return. A humour we have, that is entirely new; andallotments that shall win back Astræa. Our Labor Program stands forevidence that the Board School, at least, has done enduring work; andthe useless race of poets is fast dying out. Though we no longerconjecture what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumedwhen he hid himself among women, yet many a prize (of guineas galore)awaits the competitor who will stoop, week by week, to more practicalresearch. ``Le monde marche, '' as Renan hath it, ``vers une sorted'americanisme. .. . Peut-être la vulgarité générale sera-t-elle un jourla condition du bonheur des élus. Nous n'avons pas le droit d'etrefort difficiles. '' We will be very facile, then, since needs must;remembering the good old proverb that ``scornful dogs eat dirtypuddings. '' But, ere we show Terminus the door, at least let us flingone stone at the shrieking sulphureous houses of damnation erected astemples in his honour, and dignified with his name! There, 'midclangour, dirt, and pestilence of crowding humanity, the very spiritof worry and unrest sits embodied. The old Roman was not such a badfellow. His deity of demarcation at least breathed open air, and knewthe kindly touch of sun and wind. His simple rites were performed amidflowers and under blue sky, by sunny roads or tranquil waters; and onthis particular altar the sacrifice was ordained to be free from anystain of gore. Our hour of sacrifice, alas, has not yet come. When itdoes -- ( et haud procul absit!) -- let the offering be no bloodlessone, but let (for choice) a fat and succulent stationmaster smoke andcrackle on the altar of expiation!

Of Smoking

Concerning Cigarette Smoking: It hath been well observed by a certainphilosopher that this is a practice commendable enough, and pleasantto indulge in, ``when you're not smoking''; wherein the wholecriticism of the cigarette is found, in a little room. Of the samemanner of thinking was one that I knew, who kept by him an ample casebulging with cigarettes, to smoke while he was filling his pipe. Toysthey be verily, nugæ, and shadows of the substance. Serviceable, nevertheless, as shadows sometimes be when the substance istemporarily unattainable; as between the acts of a play, in the park, or while dressing for dinner: that such moments may not be entirelywasted. That cigarette, however, which is so prompt to appear afterdinner I would reprehend and ban and totally abolish: as enemy to thatdiviner thing before which it should pale its ineffectual fires inshame -- to wit, good drink, ``la dive bouteille''; except indeed whenthe liquor be bad, as is sometimes known to happen. Then it may servein some sort as a sorry consolation. But to leave these airysubstitutes, and come to smoking. 

It hath been ofttimes debated whether the morning pipe be the sweeter, or that first pipe of the evening which ``Hesperus, who bringeth allgood things, '' brings to the weary with home and rest. The first issmoked on a clearer palate, and comes to unjaded senses like the kissof one's first love; but lacks that feeling of perfect fruition, ofmerit recompensed and the goal and the garland won, which clings tothe vesper bowl. Whence it comes that the majority give the palm tothe latter. To which I intend no slight when I find the incense thatarises at matins sweeter even than that of evensong. For, althoughwith most of us who are labourers in the vineyard, toilers andswinkers, the morning pipe is smoked in hurry and fear and a sense ofalarums and excursions and fleeting trains, yet with all this thereare certain halcyon periods sure to arrive -- Sundays, holidays, andthe like -- the whole joy and peace of which are summed up in that onebeatific pipe after breakfast, smoked in a careless majesty like thatof the gods ``when they lie beside their nectar, and the clouds arelightly curled. '' Then only can we be said really to smoke. And sothis particular pipe of the day always carries with it festalreminiscences: memories of holidays past, hopes for holidays to come;a suggestion of sunny lawns and flannels and the ungirt loin; a sensewithal of something free and stately, as of ``faint march-music in theair, '' or the old Roman cry of ``Liberty, freedom, andenfranchisement. ''

If there be any fly in the pipe-smoker's ointment, it may be said tolurk in the matter of ``rings. '' Only the exceptionally gifted smokercan recline in his chair and emit at will the perfect smoke-ring, inconsummate eddying succession. He of the meaner sort must be contentif, at rare heaven-sent intervals -- while thinking, perhaps, ofnothing less -- there escape from his lips the unpremeditated flawlesscircle. Then ``deus fio'' he is moved to cry, at that breathlessmoment when his creation hangs solid and complete, ere the particlesbreak away and blend with the baser atmosphere. Nay, some will deny toany of us terrene smokers the gift of fullest achievement: for whatsaith the poet of the century? ``On the earth the broken arcs: in theheaven the perfect round!''

It was well observed by a certain character in one of Wilkie Collins'snovels (if an imperfect memory serveth me rightly) that women willtake pleasure in scents derived from animal emanations, clarifiedfats, and the like; yet do illogically abhor the ``clean, dry, vegetable smell'' of tobacco. Herein the true base of the feminineobjection is reached; being, as usual, inherent want of logic ratherthan any distaste, in the absolute, for the thing in question. Thinking that they ought to dislike, they do painfully cast about forreasons to justify their dislike, when none really exist. As aspecimen of their so-called arguments, I remember how a certain fairone triumphantly pointed out to me that my dog, though loving me well, could yet never be brought to like the smell of tobacco. To whom I, who respected my dog (as Ben saith of Master Shakespeare) on this sideidolatry as much as anything, was yet fain to point out -- more insorrow than in anger -- that a dog, being an animal who delights topass his whole day, from early morn to dewy eve, in shoving his noseinto every carrion beastliness that he can come across, could hardlybe considered arbiter elegantiarum in the matter of smells. But indeedI did wrong to take such foolish quibbling seriously; nor would I havedone so, if she hadn't dragged my poor innocent dog into thediscussion. 

Of Smoking in Bed: There be who consider this a depravity -- aninstance of that excess in the practice of a virtue which passes intovice -- and couple it with dram-drinking: who yet fail to justifythemselves by argument. For if bed be by common consent the greatestbliss, the divinest spot, on earth, ``ille terrarum qui præter omnesangulus ridet''; and if tobacco be the true Herb of Grace, and a joyand healing balm, and respite and nepenthe, -- if all this beadmitted, why are two things, super-excellent separately, noxious inconjunction? And is not the Bed Smoker rather an epicure in pleasure-- self indulgent perhaps, but still the triumphant creator of a new``blend, '' reminding one of a certain traveller's account of anintoxicant patronised in the South Sea Islands, which combines theblissful effect of getting drunk and remaining sober to enjoy it? YetI shall not insist too much on this point, but would only ask -- solong as the smoker be unwedded -- for some tolerance in the matter anda little logic in the discussion thereof. 

Concerning Cigars: That there be large sums given for these is withincommon knowledge. 1 d. , 2 d. , nay even 4 d. , is not too great a price, if a man will have of the finest leaf, reckless of expense. In thissort of smoking, however, I find more of vainglory and ostentationthan solid satisfaction; and its votaries would seem to display less acalm, healthy affection for tobacco than (as Sir T. Browne hath it) a``passionate prodigality. '' And, besides grievous wasting of thepocket, atmospheric changes, varyings in the crops, and the like, cause uncertainty to cling about each individual weed, so that man isalways more or less at the mercy of Nature and the elements -- anunsatisfactory and undignified position in these latter days of theTriumphant Democracy. But worst and fatallest of all, to everycigar-smoker it is certain to happen that once in his life, by somehappy combination of time, place, temperament, and Nature -- by somestarry influence, maybe, or freak of the gods in mocking sport --once, and once only, he will taste the aroma of the perfect leaf atjust the perfect point -- the ideal cigar. Henceforth his life issaddened; as one kissed by a goddess in a dream, he goes thereafter, as one might say, in a sort of love-sickness. Seeking he scarce knowswhat, his existence becomes a dissatisfied yearning; the world isspoiled for him, its joys are tasteless: so he wanders, vision-haunted, down dreary days to some miserable end. 

Yet, if one will walk this path and take the risks, the thing may bedone at comparatively small expense. To such I would commend the Romanmotto, slightly altered -- Alieni appetens, sui avarus. There bealways good fellows, with good cigars for their friends. Nay, too, theboxes of these lie open; an the good cigar belongs rather to him thatcan appreciate it aright than to the capitalist who, owing to a falsesocial system, happens to be its temporary guardian and trustee. Againthere is a saying -- bred first, I think, among the schoolmen atOxford -- that it is the duty of a son to live up to his father'sincome. Should any young man have found this task too hard for him, after the most strenuous and single-minded efforts, at least he canresolutely smoke his father's cigars. In the path of duty completesuccess is not always to be looked for; but an approving conscience, the sure reward of honest endeavour, is within reach of all. 

An Autumn Encounter

For yet another mile or two the hot dusty road runs through levelfields, till it reaches yonder shoulder of the downs, already goldenthree-parts up with ripening corn. Thitherwards lies my inevitableway; and now that home is almost in sight it seems hard that the lastpart of the long day's sweltering and delightful tramp must needs behaunted by that hateful speck, black on the effulgence of the slope. Did I not know he was only a scarecrow, the thing might be in a waycompanionable: a pleasant suggestive surmise, piquing curiosity, gilding this last weary stage with some magic of expectancy. But Ipassed close by him on my way out. Early as I was, he was already upand doing, eager to introduce himself. He leered after me as I swungdown the road, -- mimicked my gait, as it seemed, in a mostuncalled-for way; and when I looked back, he was blowing derisivekisses of farewell with his empty sleeve. 

I had succeeded, however, in shaking off the recollection between themorning's start and now; so it was annoying that he should forcehimself on me, just when there was no getting rid of him. At thisdistance, however, he might be anything. An indeterminate blot, itseems to waver, to falter, to come and vanish again in the quivering, heated air. Even so, in the old time, leaning on that familiar gate --are the tell-tale inwoven initials still decipherable? -- I used towatch Her pacing demurely towards me through the corn. It wasridiculous, it was fatuous, under all the circumstances it wasmonstrous, and yet{. .. }! We were both under twenty, so She was She, and I was I, and there were only we three the wide world over, she andI and the unbetraying gate. Porta eburnea! False visions alone spedthrough you, though Cupid was wont to light on your topmost bar, andpreen his glowing plumes. And to think that I should see her oncemore, coming down the path as if not a day had passed, hesitating asof old, and then -- but surely her ankles seem -- Confound thatscarecrow!. .. 

His sex is by this time painfully evident; also his condition in life, which is as of one looking back on better days. And now he is upon anew tack. Though here on the level it is still sultry and airless, anevening breeze is playing briskly along the slope where he stands, andone sleeve saws the air violently; the other is pointed stifflyheavenwards. It is all plain enough, my poor friend! The sins of theworld are a heavy burden and a grievous unto you. You have a mission, you must testify; it will forth, in season and out of season. For man, he wakes and sleeps and sins betimes: but crows sin steadily, withoutany cessation. And this unhappy state of things is your own particularbusiness. Even at this distance I seem to hear you rasping it:``Salvation, damnation, damnation, salvation!'' And the jolly earthsmiles in the perfect evenglow, and the corn ripples and laughs allround you, and one young rook (only fledged this year, too!), after anexcellent simulation of prostrate, heart-broken penitence, soarsjoyously away, to make love to his neighbour's wife. ``Salvation, damnation, damn -- '' A shifty wriggle of the road, and he istransformed once more. Flung back in an ecstasy of laughter, holdinghis lean sides, his whole form writhes with the chuckle and gurgle ofmerriment. Ho, ho! what a joke it was! How I took you all in! Even therooks! What a joke is everything, to be sure!

Truly, I shall be glad to get quit of this heartless mummer. Fortunately I shall soon be past him. And now, behold! the old dogwaxes amorous. Mincing, mowing, empty sleeve on hollow breast, hewould fain pose as the most irresistible old hypocrite that ever paceda metropolitan kerb. ``Love, you young dogs, '' he seems to croak, ``Love is the one thing worth living for! Enjoy your present, rooksand all, as I do!'' Why, indeed, should he alone be insensible to thegolden influence of the hour? More than one supple waist (alas! foruniversal masculine frailty!) has been circled by that tattered sleevein days gone by; a throbbing heart once beat where sodden straw nowfails to give a manly curve to the chest. Why should the coat survive, and not a particle of the passion that inspired it long ago?

At last I confront him, face to face: and the villain grinsrecognition, completely unabashed. Nay, he cocks his eye with asignificant glance under the slouch of his shapeless hat, and his armpoints persistently and with intelligence up the road. My good fellow, I know the way to the Dog and Duck as well as you do: I was goingthere anyhow, without your officious interference -- and the beer, asyou justly remark, is unimpeachable. But was this really all you'vebeen trying to say to me, this last half-hour? Well, well!

The White Poppy

A riot of scarlet on gold, the red poppy of our native fields tossesheavy tresses with gipsy abandon; her sister of the sea-shore isgolden, a yellow blossom that loves the keen salt savour of the spray. Of another hue is the poppy of history, of romance, of the muse. Whiteas the stark death-shroud, pallid as the cheeks of that queen of asilent land whose temples she languorously crowns, ghost-like besideher fuller-blooded kin, she droops dream-laden, Papaver somniferum, the poppy of the magic juice of oblivion. In the royal plenitude ofsummer, the scarlet blooms will sometimes seem but a red cry fromearth in memory of the many dews of battle that have drenched theseacres in years gone by, for little end but that these same ``bubblesof blood'' might glow to-day; the yellow flower does but hint of thegold that has dashed a thousand wrecks at her feet around theseshores: for happier suggestion we must turn to her of the pallidpetals, our white Lady of Consolation. Fitting hue to typify thecrowning blessing of forgetfulness! Too often the sable robes of nightdissemble sleeplessness, remorse, regret, self-questioning. Let black, then, rather stand for hideous memory: white for blessed blankoblivion, happiest gift of the gods! For who, indeed, can say that therecord of his life is not crowded with failure and mistake, stainedwith its petty cruelties of youth, its meannesses and follies of lateryears, all which storm and clamour incessantly at the gates of memory, refusing to be shut out? Leave us alone, O gods, to remember ourfelicities, our successes: only aid us, ye who recall no gifts, aptlyand discreetly to forget. 

Discreetly, we say; for it is a tactful forgetfulness that makes forhappiness. In the minor matter, for instance, of small moneyobligations, that shortness of memory which the school of ProfessorsPanurge and Falstaff rashly praises, may often betray into someunfortunate allusion or reference to the subject which shall pain thedelicate feelings of the obliger; or, if he be of coarser clay, shalllead him in his anger to express himself with unseemliness, andthereby to do violence to his mental tranquillity, in which alone, asMarcus Aurelius teacheth, lieth the perfection of moral character. This is to be a stumbling-block and an offence against the brethren. It is better to keep just memory enough to avoid such hidden rocks andshoals; in which thing Mr Swiveller is our great exemplar, whosemental map of London was a chart wherein every creditor was carefully``buoyed. ''

The wise man prays, we are told, for a good digestion: let us add tothe prayer -- and a bad memory. Truly we are sometimes tempted tothink that we are the only ones cursed with this corroding canker. Ourfriends, we can swear, have all, without exception, atrociousmemories; why is ours alone so hideously vital? Yet this isolationmust be imaginary; for even as we engage in this selfish moan for helpin our own petty case, we are moved to add a word for certain otherswho, meaning no ill, unthinkingly go about to add to humanity'salready heavy load of suffering. How much needless misery is caused inthis world by the reckless ``recollections'' of dramatic and othercelebrities? You gods, in lending ear to our prayer, remember too, above all other sorts and conditions of men, these our poor erringbrothers and sisters, the sometime sommités of Mummerdom!

Moments there are, it is true, when this traitor spirit tricks you:when some subtle scent, some broken notes of an old song, nay, evensome touch of a fresher air on your cheeks at night -- a breath of``le vent qui vient à travers la montagne'' -- have power to ravish, to catch you back to the blissful days when you trod the one authenticParadise. Moments only, alas! Then the evil crowd rushes in again, howls in the sacred grove, tramples down and defiles the happy garden;and once more you cry to Our Lady of Sleep, crowned of the whitepoppy. And you envy your dog who, for full discharge of a presentbenefaction having wagged you a hearty, expressive tail, will thenpursue it gently round the hearth-rug till, in restful coil, hereaches it at last, and oblivion with it; every one of his half-dozendiurnal sleeps being in truth a royal amnesty. 

But whose the hand that shall reach us the herb of healing? Perditablesses every guest at the shearing with a handful of blossom; butthis gift is not to be asked of her whose best wish to her friends is``grace and remembrance. '' The fair Ophelia, rather: nay, for as anursling she hugs her grief, and for her the memory of the past is a``sorrow's crown of sorrow. '' What flowers are these her pale handoffers? ``There's pansies, that's for thoughts!'' For me rather, Odear Ophelia, the white poppy of forgetfulness. 

A Bohemian in Exile

A Reminiscence

When, many years ago now, the once potent and extensive kingdom ofBohemia gradually dissolved and passed away, not a few historians werefound to chronicle its past glories; and some have gone on to tell thefate of this or that once powerful chieftain who either donned theswallow-tail and conformed or, proudly self-exiled, sought some quietretreat and died as he had lived, a Bohemian. But these were of theprinces of the land. To the people, the villeins, the common rank andfile, does no interest attach? Did they waste and pine, anæmic, inthin, strange, unwonted air? Or sit at the table of the scornful andlearn, with Dante, how salt was alien bread? It is of one of thosefaithful commons I would speak, narrating only ``the short and simpleannals of the poor. ''

It is to be noted that the kingdom aforesaid was not so much a kingdomas a United States -- a collection of self-ruling guilds, municipalities, or republics, bound together by a common method ofviewing life. ``There once was a king of Bohemia'' -- but that was along time ago, and even Corporal Trim was not certain in whose reignit was. These small free States, then, broke up gradually, fromvarious causes and with varying speed; and I think ours was one of thelast to go. 

With us, as with many others, it was a case of lost leaders. ``Justfor a handful of silver he left us''; though it was not exactly that, but rather that, having got the handful of silver, they wanted a widerhorizon to fling it about under than Bloomsbury afforded. 

 So they left us for their pleasure; and in due time, one by one -- But I will not be morose about them; they had honestly earned theirsuccess, and we all honestly rejoiced at it, and do so still. 

When old Pan was dead and Apollo's bow broken, there were manyfaithful pagans who would worship at no new shrines, but went out tothe hills and caves, truer to the old gods in their discrowneddesolation than in their pomp and power. Even so were we left behind, a remnant of the faithful. We had never expected to become great inart or song; it was the life itself that we loved; that was our end --not, as with them, the means to an end. 

 We aimed at no glory, no lovers of glory we; Give us the glory of going on and still to be. Unfortunately, going on was no longer possible; the old order hadchanged, and we could only patch up our broken lives as best might be. 

Fothergill said that he, for one, would have no more of it. The pastwas dead, and he wasn't going to try to revive it. Henceforth he, too, would be dead to Bloomsbury. Our forefathers, speaking of a man'sdeath, said ``he changed his life. '' This is how Fothergill changedhis life and died to Bloomsbury. One morning he made his way to theWhitechapel Road, and there he bought a barrow. The Whitechapelbarrows are of all sizes, from the barrow wheeled about by a boy withhalf a dozen heads of cabbages to barrows drawn by a tall pony, suchas on Sundays take the members of a club to Epping Forest. They areall precisely the same in plan and construction, only in the largersizes the handles develop or evolve into shafts; and they are equallysuitable, according to size, for the vending of whelks, for ahot-potato can, a piano organ, or for the conveyance of a cheery andnumerous party to the Derby. Fothergill bought a medium sized``developed'' one, and also a donkey to fit; he had it painted white, picked out with green -- the barrow, not the donkey -- and when hisarrangements were complete, stabled the whole for the night inBloomsbury. The following morning, before the early red had quitefaded from the sky, the exodus took place, those of us who were leftbeing assembled to drink a parting whisky-and-milk in sad and solemnsilence. Fothergill turned down Oxford Street, sitting on the shaftwith a short clay in his mouth, and disappeared from our sight, heading west at a leisurely pace. So he passed out of our lives by wayof the Bayswater Road. 

They must have wandered far and seen many things, he and his donkey, from the fitful fragments of news that now and again reached us. Itseems that eventually, his style of living being economical, he wasenabled to put down his donkey and barrow, and set up a cart and amare -- no fashionable gipsy-cart, a sort of houseboat on wheels, buta light and serviceable cart, with a moveable tilt, constructed on hisown designs. This allowed him to take along with him a few canvasesand other artists' materials; soda-water, whisky, and such likenecessaries; and even to ask a friend from town for a day or two, ifhe wanted to. 

He was in this state of comparative luxury when at last, by the merestaccident, I foregathered with him once more. I had pulled up toStreatley one afternoon, and, leaving my boat, had gone for a longramble on the glorious North Berkshire Downs to stretch my legs beforedinner. Somewhere over on Cuckhamsley Hill, by the side of theRidgeway, remote from the habitable world, I found him, smoking hisvesper pipe on the shaft of his cart, the mare cropping the shortgrass beside him. He greeted me without surprise or effusion, as if wehad only parted yesterday, and without a hint of an allusion to pasttimes, but drifted quietly into rambling talk of his last three years, and, without ever telling his story right out, left a strangepicturesque impression of a nomadic life which struck one as separatedby fifty years from modern conventional existence. The old road-lifestill lingered on in places, it seemed, once one got well away fromthe railway: there were two Englands existing together, the onefringing the great iron highways wherever they might go -- the Englandunder the eyes of most of us. The other, unguessed at by many, inwhatever places were still vacant of shriek and rattle, drowsed on asof old: the England of heath and common and windy sheep down, ofby-lanes and village-greens -- the England of Parson Adams andLavengro. The spell of the free untrammelled life came over me as Ilistened, till I was fain to accept of his hospitality and ahorse-blanket for the night, oblivious of civilised comforts down atthe Bull. On the downs where Alfred fought we lay and smoked, gazingup at the quiet stars that had shone on many a Dane lying stark andstill a thousand years ago; and in the silence of the lone tract thatenfolded us we seemed nearer to those old times than to these I hadleft that afternoon, in the now hushed and sleeping valley of theThames. 

When the news reached me, some time later, that Fothergill's aunt haddied and left him her house near town and the little all she hadpossessed, I heard it with misgivings, not to say forebodings. For thehouse had been his grandfather's, and he had spent much of his boyhoodthere; it had been a dream of his early days to possess it in somehappy future, and I knew he could never bear to sell or let it. On theother hand, can you stall the wild ass of the desert? And will not thecaged eagle mope and pine?

However, possession was entered into, and all seemed to go well forthe time. The cart was honourably installed in the coach-house, themare turned out to grass. Fothergill lived idly and happily, to allseeming, with ``a book of verses underneath the bough, '' and a bottleof old claret for the friend who might chance to drop in. But as theyear wore on small signs began to appear that he who had always``rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak'' was beginning tofeel himself caged, though his bars were gilded. 

I was talking one day to his coachman (he now kept threemen-servants), and he told me that of a Sunday morning when thehousehold had gone to church and everything was quiet, Mr Fothergillwould go into the coach-house and light his pipe, and sit on the stepof the brougham (he had a brougham now), and gaze at the old cart, andsmoke and say nothing; and smoke and say nothing again. He didn't likeit, the coachman confessed; and to me it seemed ominous. 

One morning late in March, at the end of a long hard winter, I waswakened by a flood of sunshine. The early air came warm and softthrough the open window; the first magic suggestion of spring wasabroad, with its whispered hints of daffodils and budding hawthorns;and one's blood danced to imagined pipings of Pan from happy fieldsfar distant. At once I thought of Fothergill, and, with a certainforeboding of ill, made my way down to Holly Lodge as soon aspossible. It was with no surprise at all that I heard that the masterwas missing. In the very first of the morning, it seemed, or ever theearliest under-housemaid had begun to set man-traps on the stairs andalong the passages, he must have quietly left the house. The servantswere cheerful enough, nevertheless, and thought the master must onlyhave ``gone for a nice long walk, '' and so on, after the manner oftheir kind. Without a word I turned my steps to the coach-house. Sureenough, the old cart was missing; the mare was gone from the paddock. It was no good my saying anything; pursuit of this wild haunter oftracks and by-paths would have been futile indeed. So I kept my owncounsel. Fothergill never returned to Holly Lodge, and has been moresecret and evasive since his last flight, rarely venturing on oldcamping grounds near home, like to a bird scared by the fowler's gun. 

Once indeed, since then, while engaged in pursuit of the shy quarryknown as the Early Perp. , late Dec. , E. Eng. , and the like, specimensof which I was tracking down in the west, I hit upon him by accident;hearing in an old village rumours concerning a strange man in a cartwho neither carried samples nor pushed the brewing interest by othermeans than average personal consumption -- tales already beginning tobe distorted into material for the myth of the future. I found himfriendly as ever, equally ready to spin his yarns. As the evening woreon, I ventured upon an allusion to past times and Holly Lodge; but hisair of puzzled politeness convinced me that the whole thing had passedout of his mind, as a slight but disagreeable incident in the eventenor of his nomadic existence. 

After all, his gains may have outbalanced his losses. Had he cared, hemight, with his conversational gifts, have been a social success;certainly, I think, an artistic one. He had great powers, had anyimpulse been present to urge him to execution and achievement. But hewas for none of these things. Contemplative, receptive, with a keensense of certain sub-tones and side aspects of life unseen by most, hedoubtless chose wisely to enjoy life his own way, and to gather fromthe fleeting days what bliss they had to give, nor spend them intoiling for a harvest to be reaped when he was dust. 

 Some for the glories of this life, and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come: Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum. Justifiable Homicide

This is a remedial age, an age of keys for all manner of locks; so hecannot be said to ask too much who seeks for exact information as tohow a young man ought, in justice to himself and to society, to dealwith his relations. During his minority he has lain entirely at theirmercy: has been their butt, their martyr, their drudge, their corpusvile. Possessing all the sinews of war, this stiff-necked tribe hasconsistently refused to ``part'': even for the provision of thoseluxuries so much more necessary than necessities. Its members havecrammed their victim full of precepts, rules of conduct, moral maxims, and most miscellaneous counsel: all which he intuitively suspected atthe time, and has ascertained by subsequent experience, to be utterlyworthless. Now, when their hour has come, when the tocsin has soundedat last, and the Gaul is at the gate, they still appear to think thatthe old condition of things is to go on; unconscious, apparently, ofatonement due, of retribution to be exacted, of wrongs to be avengedand of insults to be wiped away!

Over the north-west frontier, where the writ of the English Raj runsnot, the artless Afghan is happy in a code that fully provides forrelatives who neglect or misunderstand their obligations. An Afghan itwas who found himself compelled to reprove an uncle with anunfortunate habit of squandering the family estate. An excellentrelative, this uncle, in all other respects. As a liar, he had fewequals; he robbed with taste and discretion; and his murders were allimbued with true artistic feeling. He might have lived to a green oldage of spotless respectability but for his one little failing. As itwas, justice had to be done, ruat cælum: and so it came about that oneday the nephew issued forth to correct him with a matchlock. Theinnocent old man was cultivating his paternal acres; so the nephew wasable, unperceived, to get a steady sight on him. His finger was on thetrigger, when suddenly there slipped into his mind the divine precept:``Allah is merciful!'' He lowered his piece, and remained for a littleplunged in thought; meanwhile the unconscious uncle hoed his paddy. Then with a happy smile he took aim once more, for there also occurredto him the precept equally divine: ``But Allah is also just. '' With aneasy conscience he let fly, and behold! there was an uncle the more inParadise. 

It was probably some little affair of a similar quality thatconstrained a recruit in a regiment stationed at Peshawur to apply forleave of absence: in order to attend to family matters of importance. The Colonel knew it was small use refusing the leave, as in that casehis recruit would promptly desert; so he could only ask, how long wasthe transaction like to take? It was told him, after consideration, that, allowing for all possible difficulties and delays, a month wouldmeet the necessities of the case; and on that understanding he allowedhis man to depart. At the end of the month he reappeared on duty, asubdued but mellow cheer shining through his wonted impassiveness. HisColonel ventured to inquire of him, in a general way, if the businessin question were satisfactorily concluded. And he replied: ``I got himfrom behind a rock. ''

There are practical difficulties in the way of the adoption of suchmethods at home. We must be content to envy, without imitating, thesefree and happy sons of the hills. And yet a few of the old school areleft us still: averse from change, mistrustful of progress, stickingsteadily to the good old-fashioned dagger and bowl. I had a friend whodisposed of a relative every spring. Uncles were his special line --(he had suffered much from their tribe, having been early left anorphan) -- though he had dabbled in aunts, and in his hot youth, whenhe was getting his hand in, he had even dallied with a grand-parent ortwo. But it was in uncles he excelled. He possessed (at the beginningof his career) a large number of these connections, and pursuit ofthem, from the mere sordid point of view of £ s. D. , proved lucrative. But he always protested (and I believed him) that gain with him was asecondary consideration. It would hardly be in the public interest todisclose his modus operandi. I shall only remark that he was one ofthe first to realise the security and immunity afforded the artist bythe conditions of modern London. Hence it happened that he usuallypractised in town, but spent his vacations at the country houses ofsuch relations as were still spared him, where he was always the lifeand soul of the place. Unfortunately he is no longer with us, toassist in the revision of this article: nor was it permitted me tosoothe his last moments. The presiding Sheriff was one of thosenew-fangled officials who insist on the exclusion of the public, andhe declined to admit me either in the capacity of a personalconnection or, though I tried my hardest, as the representative of``The National Observer. '' It only remains to be said of my much-triedand still lamented friend, that he left few relatives to mourn hisuntimely end. 

But our reluctant feet must needs keep step with the imperious marchof Time, and my poor friend's Art (as himself in later years wouldsorrowfully admit) is now almost as extinct as the glass-staining ofold, or ``Robbia's craft so apt and strange''; while our thin-bloodedyouth, too nice for the joyous old methods, are content to findsweetest revenge in severely dropping their relations. This is indeeda most effective position: it exasperates, while it is unassailable. And yet there remains a higher course, a nobler task. Not mereforgiveness: it is simple duty to forgive -- even one's guardians. Noyoung man of earnest aspirations will be content to stop there. Nay:lead them on, these lost ones, by the hand; conduct them ``generouslyand gently, and with linking of the arm''; educate them, eradicatetheir false ideals, dispel their foolish prejudices; be to theirfaults a little blind and to their virtues very kind: in fine, realisethat you have a mission -- that these wretches are not here fornothing. The task will seem hard at first; but only those who havetried can know how much may be done by assiduous and kindly efforttowards the chastening -- ay! the final redemption even! -- of themost hopeless and pig-headed of uncles. 

The Fairy Wicket

From digging in the sandy, over-triturated soil of times historical, all dotted with date and number and sign, how exquisite the relief inturning to the dear days outside history -- yet not so very far offneither for us nurslings of the northern sun -- when kindly beastswould loiter to give counsel by the wayside, and a fortunate encounterwith one of the Good People was a surer path to Fortune and the Bridethan the best-worn stool that ever proved step-ladder to aspiringyouth. For then the Fairy Wicket stood everywhere ajar -- everywhereand to each and all. ``Open, open, green hill!'' -- you needed no morerecondite sesame than that: and, whoever you were, you might have aglimpse of the elfin dancers in the hall that is litten within byneither sun nor moon; or catch at the white horse's bridle as theFairy Prince rode through. It has been closed now this many a year(the fairies, always strong in the field, are excellentwicket-keepers); and if it open at all, 'tis but for a moment'smockery of the material generation that so deliberately turned itsback on the gap into Elf-Land -- that first stage to the Beyond. 

It was a wanton trick, though, that these folk of malice used to playon a small school-boy, new kicked out of his nest into the draughty, uncomfortable outer world, his unfledged skin still craving thefeathers whereinto he was wont to nestle. The barrack-like school, thearid, cheerless class-rooms, drove him to Nature for redress; and, under an alien sky, he would go forth and wander along the iron roadby impassive fields, so like yet so unlike those hitherto a part ofhim and responding to his every mood. And to him, thus loitering withoverladen heart, there would come suddenly a touch of warmth, ofstrange surprise. The turn of the road just ahead -- that, sure, isnot all unfamiliar? That row of elms -- it cannot entirely be accidentthat they range just so? And, if not accident, then round the bendwill come the old duck-pond, the shoulder of the barn will top it, afew yards on will be the gate -- it swings-to with its familiar click-- the dogs race down the avenue -- and then -- and then! It is allwildly fanciful; and yet, though knowing not Tertullian, a ``credoquia impossibile'' is on his tongue as he quickens his pace -- forwhat else can he do? A step, and the spell is shattered -- all iscruel and alien once more; while every copse and hedge-row seemsa-tinkle with faint elfish laughter. The Fairies have had their joke:they have opened the wicket one of their own hand's-breadths, and shutit in their victim's face. When next that victim catches a fairy, hepurposes to tie up the brat in sight of his own green hill, and sethim to draw up a practical scheme for Village Councils. 

One of the many women I ever really loved, fair in the fearless oldfashion, was used to sing, in the blithe, unfettered accent of thepeople: ``I'd like to be a fairy, And dance upon my toes, I'd like tobe a fairy, And wear short close!'' And in later life it is to her sexthat the wee (but very wise) folk sometimes delegate their power oftorment. Such understudies are found to play the part exceeding well;and many a time the infatuated youth believes he sees in the depth ofone sole pair of eyes -- blue, brown, or green (the fairy colour) --the authentic fairy wicket standing ajar: many a time must he hear thequaint old formula, ``I'm sure, if I've ever done anything to lead youto think, '' etc (runs it not so?), ere he shall realise that here isthe gate upon no magic pleasance but on a cheap suburban villa, banging behind the wrathful rate-collector or hurled open to speed thepallid householder to the Registrar's Office. In still grosserhabitations, too, they lurk, do the People of Mischief, ready tofrolic out on the unsuspecting one: as in the case, which still hauntsmy memory, of a certain bottle of an historic Château-Yquem, hued likeVenetian glass, odorous as a garden in June. Forth from out the faintperfume of this haunted drink there danced a bevy from Old France, clad in the fashion of Louis-Quinze, peach-coloured knots of ribbonbedizening apple-green velvets, as they moved in stately wise amongthe roses of the old garden, to the quaint music -- Rameau, was it? --of a fairy cornemuse, while fairy Watteaus, Fragonards, Lancrets, satand painted them. Alas! too shallow the bottle, too brief the brawls:not to be recalled by any quantity of Green Chartreuse. 

Aboard the Galley

He was cruising in the Southern Seas (was the Ulysses who told me thistale), when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whoselike he had not before seen. For each little craft was a corpse, stiffly ``marlined, '' or bound about with tarred rope, as mariners douse to treat plug tobacco: also ballasted, and with a fair mast andsail stepped through his midriff. These self-sufficing ships knew nodivided authority: no pilot ever took the helm from the captain'shands; no mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained of theprovisions. In a certain island to windward (the native pilotexplained) it was the practice, when a man died, to bury him for thetime being in dry, desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from hispeople, when the waiting bodies were brought out and, caulked andrigged secumdum artem, were launched with the first fair breeze, theadmiral at their head, on their voyage to the Blessed Islands. And ifa chief should die, and the sand should hold no store of corpses forhis escort, this simple practical folk would solve the littledifficulty by knocking some dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head, that the notable might voyage like a gentleman. Whence this gallantlittle company, running before the breeze, stark, happy, and extinct, all bound for the Isles of Light! 'Twas a sight to shame us sitters athome, who believe in those Islands, most of us, even as they, yet arecontent to trundle City-wards or to Margate, so long as the sorrybreath is in us; and, breathless at last, to Bow or Kensal Green;without one effort, dead or alive, to reach the far-shiningHesperides. 

``Dans la galère, capitane, nous étions quatre-vingt rameurs!'' sangthe oarsmen in the ballad; and they, though indeed they toiled on thegalley-bench, were free and happy pirates, members of an honoured andliberal profession. But all we -- pirates, parsons, stockbrokers, whatever our calling -- are but galley-slaves of the basest sort, fettered to the oar each for his little spell. A common misery linksus all, like the chain that runs the length of the thwarts. Cannothing make it worth our while not to quarrel with our fellows? Themenace of the storms is for each one and for all: the master's whiphas a fine impartiality. Crack! the lash that scored my comrade's backhas flicked my withers too; yet neither of us was shirking -- it wasthat grinning ruffian in front. Well: to-morrow, God willing, theevasion shall be ours, while he writhes howling. But why do we neveronce combine -- seize on the ship, fling our masters into the sea, andsteer for some pleasant isle far down under the Line, beyond thestill-vexed Bermoothes? When ho for feasting! Hey for tobacco andfree-quarters! But no: the days pass, and are reckoned up, and donewith; and ever more pressing cares engage. Those fellows on theleeward benches are having an easier time than we poor dogs on theweather side? Then, let us abuse, pelt, vilify then: let us stealtheir grub, and have at them generally for a set of shirking, malingering brutes! What matter that to-morrow they may be towindward, we to lee? We never can look ahead. And they know this well, the gods our masters, pliers of the whip. And mayhap we like them nonethe worse for it. 

Indeed, there is a traitor sort among ourselves, that spins facilephrases in the honour of these whipmasters of ours -- as ``omnes eodemcogimur, '' and the rest; which is all very pretty and mightyconsoling. The fact is, the poets are the only people who score by thepresent arrangement; which it is therefore their interest to maintain. While we are doing all the work, these incorrigible skulkers loungeabout and make ribald remarks; they write Greek tragedies on Fate, onthe sublimity of Suffering, on the Petty Span, and so on; and act in agenerally offensive way. And we are even weak enough to buy theirbooks; offer them drinks, peerages, and things; and say whatsuperlative fellows they are! But when the long-looked-for combinationcomes, and we poor devils have risen and abolished fate, destiny, theOlympian Council, early baldness, and the like, these poets willreally have to go. 

And when every rhymester has walked the plank, shall we still put upwith our relations? True members of the ``stupid party, '' who neverbelieve in us, who know (and never forget) the follies of ouradolescence; who are always wanting us not to do things; who arelavish of advice, yet angered by the faintest suggestion of a smalladvance in cash: shall the idle singers perish and these endure? No:as soon as the last poet has splashed over the side, to the sharkswith our relations!

The old barkey is lightening famously: who shall be next to go? TheSportsman of intolerable yarns: who slays twice over -- first, hisgame, and then the miserable being he button-holes for the tediousrecital. Shall we suffer him longer? Who else? Who is that coweringunder the bulwarks yonder? The man who thinks he can imitate theScottish accent! Splash! And the next one? What a crowd is here! Howthey block the hatchways, lumber the deck, and get between you and thepurser's room -- these fadmongers, teetotallers, missionaries ofdivers isms! Overboard with them, and hey for the Fortunate Isles!Then for tobacco in a hammock 'twixt the palms! Then for wine cooledin a brooklet losing itself in silver sands! Then for -- but O thesebilboes on our ankles, how mercilessly they grip! The vertical sunblisters the bare back: faint echoes of Olympian laughter seem toflicker like Northern Lights across the stark and pitiless sky. Oneearnest effort would do it, my brothers! A little modesty, a shortsinking of private differences; and then we should all be free andequal gentlemen of fortune, and I would be your Captain! ``Who? you?you would make a pretty Captain!'' Better than you, you scurvy, skulking, little galley-slave! ``Galley-slave yourself, and be ---Pull together, boys, and lie low! Here's the Master coming with hiswhip!''

The Lost Centaur

It is somewhere set down (or does the legend only exist in the greatvolume of ought-to-be-writ?) that the young Achilles, nurtured frombabyhood by the wise and kindly Cheiron, accustomed to reverence anideal of human skill and wisdom blent with all that was best andnoblest of animal instinct, strength and swiftness, found poorhumanity sadly to miss, when at last the was sent forth among hispottering little two-legged peers. Himself alone he had hithertofancied to be the maimed one, the incomplete; he looked to find thelords of earth even such as these Centaurs; wise and magnanimous atop:below, shod with the lightning, winged with the wind, terrible in thepotentiality of the armed heel. Instead of which -- ! How fallen washis first fair hope of the world! And even when reconciled at last tothe dynasty of the forked radish, after he had seen its quality testedround the clangorous walls of Troy -- some touch of an imperialdisdain ever lingered in his mind for these feeble folk who couldcontentedly hail him -- him, who had known Cheiron! -- as hero andlord!

Achilles has passed, with the Centaurs and Troy; but the feelinglingers. 

Of strange and divers strands is twisted the mysterious cord that, reaching back ``through spaces out of space and timeless time, ''somewhere joins us to the Brute; a twine of mingled yarn, not utterlybase. As we grow from our animal infancy, and the threads snap one byone at each gallant wing-stroke of a soul poising for flight intoEmpyrean, we are yet conscious of a loss for every gain, we have someforlorn sense of a vanished heritage. Willing enough are we to ``letthe ape and tiger die''; but the pleasant cousins dissembled in hideand fur and feather are not all tigers and apes: which last vile folk, indeed, exist for us only in picture-books, and chiefly offend byalways carrying the Sunday School ensign of a Moral at their tails. Others -- happily of less didactic dispositions -- there be; and it isto these unaffected, careless companions that the sensible child iswont to devote himself; leaving severely alone the stiff, tamecreatures claiming to be of closer kin. And yet these playmates, whilecheerfully admitting him of their fellowship, make him feel hisinferiority at every point. Vainly, his snub nose projectedearthwards, he essays to sniff it with the terrier who (as becomes thenobler animal) is leading in the chase; and he is ready to weep as herealises his loss. And the rest of the Free Company, -- the pony, thecows, the great cart-horses, -- are ever shaming him by theirunboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Eventhe friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his breadand drink of his cup, and be unto him as a brother, -- which among allthese unhappy bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purelycontented, so apt to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of boyhoodas he? What wonder that at times, when the neophyte in life begins torealise that all these desirable accomplishments have had to besurrendered one by one in the process of developing a Mind, the courseof fitting out a Lord of Creation, he is wont -- not knowing theextent of the kingdom to which he is heir -- to feel a littlediscontented?

Ere now this ill-humour, taking root in a nature wherein the animal isalready ascendant, has led by downward paths to the Goat-Foot, in whomthe submerged human system peeps out but fitfully, at exalted moments. He, the peevish and irascible, shy of trodden ways and prettydomesticities, is linked to us by little but his love of melody; butfor which saving grace, the hair would soon creep up from thigh tohorn of him. At times he will still do us a friendly turn: will lend ahelping hand to poor little Psyche, wilfully seeking her ownsalvation; will stand shoulder to shoulder with us on Marathon plain. But in the main his sympathies are first for the beast: to which hishorns are never horrific, but, with his hairy pelt, ever natural andfamiliar, and his voice (with its talk of help and healing) not harshnor dissonant, but voice of very brother as well as very god. 

And this declension -- for declension it is, though we achieve all theconfidences of Melampus, and even master with him the pleasant argotof the woods -- may still be ours if we suffer what lives in us of ourprimal cousins to draw us down. On the other hand, let soul inform andirradiate body as it may, the threads are utterly shorn asunder never:nor is man, the complete, the self-contained, permitted to cut himselfwholly adrift from these his poor relations. The mute and stuntedhuman embryo that gazes appealingly from out the depths of their eyesmust ever remind him of a kinship once (possibly) closer. Nay, attimes, it must even seem to whelm him in reproach. As thus: ``Was itreally necessary, after all, that we two should part company so early?May you not have taken a wrong turning somewhere, in your long raceafter your so-called progress, after the perfection of this be-laudedspecies of yours? A turning whose due avoidance might perhaps haveresulted in no such lamentable cleavage as is here, but in someperfect embodiment of the dual nature: as who should say a being withthe nobilities of both of us, the basenesses of neither? So might you, more fortunately guided, have been led at last up the green sides ofPelion, to the ancestral, the primeval, Centaur still waiting majesticon the summit!'' It is even so. Perhaps this thing might once havebeen, O cousin outcast and estranged! But the opportunity was longsince lost. Henceforth, two ways for us for ever!

Orion

The moonless night has a touch of frost, and is steely-clear. High anddominant amidst the Populations of the Sky, the restless and thesteadfast alike, hangs the great Plough, lit with a hard radiance asof the polished and shining share. And yonder, low on the horizon, buthalf resurgent as yet, crouches the magnificent hunter: watchful, seemingly, and expectant: with some hint of menace in his port. 

Yet should his game be up, you would think by now. Many a century haspassed since the plough first sped a conqueror east and west, clearingforest and draining fen; policing the valleys with barbed-wires andSunday schools, with the chains that are forged of peace, the irkingfetters of plenty: driving also the whole lot of us, these to sweat atits tail, those to plod with the patient team, but all to march in agreat chain-gang, the convicts of peace and order and law: while thehappy nomad, with his woodlands, his wild cattle, his pleasingnuptialities, has long since disappeared, dropping only in his flightsome store of flint-heads, a legacy of confusion. Truly, we Childrenof the Plough, but for yon tremendous Monitor in the sky, were inright case to forget that the Hunter is still a quantity to reckonwithal. Where, then, does he hide, the Shaker of the Spear? Why, here, my brother, and here; deep in the breasts of each and all of us! Andfor this drop of primal quicksilver in the blood what poppy ormandragora shall purge it hence away?

Of pulpiteers and parents it is called Original Sin: a term wherewiththey brand whatever frisks and butts with rude goatish horns againstaccepted maxims and trim theories of education. In the abstract, ofcourse, this fitful stirring of the old yeast is no more sin than anatural craving for a seat on a high stool, for the inscription -- nowhorizontal, and now vertical -- of figures, is sin. But the deskmencommand a temporary majority: for the short while they shall hold thecards they have the right to call the game. And so -- since we mustbow to the storm -- let the one thing be labelled Sin, and the otherSalvation -- for a season: ourselves forgetting never that it is all amatter of nomenclature. What we have now first to note is that thisoriginal Waft from the Garden asserts itself most vigorously in theChild. This it is that thrusts the small boy out under the nakedheavens, to enact a sorry and shivering Crusoe on an islet in theduck-pond. This it is that sends the little girl footing it after thegipsy's van, oblivious of lessons, puddings, the embrace maternal, thepaternal smack; hearing naught save the faint, far bugle-summons tothe pre-historic little savage that thrills and answers in thetingling blood of her; seeing only a troop of dusky, dull-eyed guidesalong that shining highway to the dim land east o' the sun and west o'the moon: where freedom is, and you can wander and breathe, and atnight tame street lamps there are none -- only the hunter's fires, andthe eyes of lions, and the mysterious stars. In later years it isstifled and gagged -- buried deep, a green turf at the head of it, andon its heart a stone; but it lives, it breathes, it lurks, it will upand out when 'tis looked for least. That stockbroker, some briefsummers gone, who was missed from his wonted place one settling-day! agoodly portly man, i' faith: and had a villa and a steam launch atSurbiton: and was versed in the esoteric humours of the House. Whocould have thought that the Hunter lay hid in him? Yet, after manyweeks, they found him in a wild nook of Hampshire. Ragged, sun-burnt, the nocturnal haystack calling aloud from his frayed andweather-stained duds, his trousers tucked, he was tickling trout withgodless native urchins; and when they would have won him to himselfwith honied whispers of American Rails, he answered but with babble ofgreen fields. He is back in his wonted corner now: quite cured, apparently, and tractable. And yet -- let the sun shine too wantonlyin Throgmorton Street, let an errant zephyr, quick with the warmSouth, fan but his cheek too wooingly on his way to the station; andwill he not once more snap his chain and away? Ay, truly: and nexttime he will not be caught. 

Deans have danced to the same wild piping, though their chapters havehushed the matter up. Even Duchesses (they say) have ``come trippingdoon the stair, '' rapt by the climbing passion from theirstrawberry-leaved surroundings into starlit spaces. Nay, ourselves, too -- the douce, respectable mediocrities that we are -- which of usbut might recall some fearful outbreak whose details are mercifullyunknown to the household that calls us breadwinner and chief? Whatmarvel that up yonder the Hunter smiles? When he knows that every onein his ken, the tinker with the statesman, has caught his bugle blastand gone forth on its irresistible appeal!

Not that they are so easily followed as of yore, those flying echoesof the horn! Joints are stiffer, maybe; certainly the desolate suburbscreep ever farther into the retreating fields; and when you reach thewindy moorland, lo! it is all staked out into building-lots. Mud ismuddier now than heretofore; and ruts are ruttier. And what friendlessold beast comes limping down the dreary lane? He seems sorely shrunkand shoulder-shotten; but by the something of divinity in his look, still more than by the wings despondent along his mighty sides, 'tisever the old Pegasus -- not yet the knacker's own. ``Hard times I'vebeen having, '' he murmurs, as you rub his nose. ``These fellows havereally no seat except for a park hack. As for this laurel, we werewont to await it trembling: and in taking it we were afraid. YourEnglish way of hunting it down with yelpings and hallooings -- well, Imay be out of date, but we wouldn't have stood that sort of thing onHelicon. '' So he hobbles down the road. Good night, old fellow! Out ofdate? Well, it may be so. And alas! the blame is ours. 

But for the Hunter -- there he rises -- couchant no more. Nay, flungfull stretch on the blue, he blazes, he dominates, he appals! Will histurn, then, really come at last? After some Armageddon of cataclysmalruin, all levelling, whelming the County Councillor with theMusic-hall artiste, obliterating the very furrows of the Plough, shallthe skin-clad nomad string his bow once more, and once more loose thewhistling shaft? Wildly incredible it seems. And yet -- look up! Lookup and behold him confident, erect, majestic -- there on the thresholdof the sky!