He cannot tell
whether he puts his knapsack on, or takes it off, with more
delight. The excitement of the departure puts him in key
for that of the arrival. Whatever he does is not only a
reward in itself, but will be further rewarded in the
sequel; and so pleasure leads on to pleasure in an endless
chain.
*
Nor does the scenery any more affect the thoughts than the
thoughts affect the scenery. We see places through our
humours as through differently-coloured glasses. We are
ourselves a term in the equation, a note of the chord, and
make discord or harmony almost at will. There is no fear
for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves
sufficiently to the country that surrounds and follows us,
so that we are ever thinking suitable thoughts or telling
ourselves some suitable sort of story as we go. We become
thus, in some sense, a centre of beauty; we are provocative
of beauty, much as a gentle and sincere character is
provocative of sincerity and gentleness in others.
*
There is nobody under thirty so dead but his heart will
stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. 'We are not
cotton-spinners all;' or, at least, not all through. There
is some life in humanity yet; and youth will now and again
find a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw
up a situation to go strolling with a knapsack.
*
I began my little pilgrimage in the most enviable of all
humours: that in which a person, with a sufficiency of
money and a knapsack, turns his back on a town and walks
forward into a country of which he knows only by the vague
report of others.
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