Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Walking Tours 249
stride. And surely, of all possible moods,
this, in which a man takes the road, is the
best. Of course, if he will keep thinking of
his anxieties, if he will open the merchant
Abudah's chest and walk arm-in-arm with
the hag — why, wherever he is, and whether
he walk fast or slow, the chances are that he
will not be happy. And so much the more
shame to himself! There are perhaps thirty
men setting forth at that same hour, and I
would lay a large wager there is not another
dull face among the thirty. It would be a
fine thing to follow, in a coat of darkness,
one after another of these wayfarers, some
summer morning, for the first few miles upon
the road. This one, who walks fast, with a
keen look in his eyes, is all concentrated in
his own mind ; he is up at his loom, weaving
and weaving, to set the landscape to words.
This one peers about, as he goes, among the
grasses ; he waits by the canal to watch the
dragon-flies ; he leans on the gate of the
pasture, and cannot look enough upon the
complacent kine. And here comes another,