Once and again we have all made the experiment. We
know the end of it right well. And yet if we make it for
the hundredth time to-morrow, it will have the same charm
as ever; our hearts will beat and our eyes will be bright,
as we leave the town behind us, and we shall feel once
again (as we have felt so often before) that we are cutting
ourselves loose for ever from our whole past life, with all
its sins and follies and circumscriptions, and go forward
as a new creature into a new world.
*
Herein, I think, lies the chief attraction of railway
travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so
little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart
becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country;
and while the body is borne forward in the flying chain of
carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them,
at unfrequented stations; they make haste up the poplar
alley that leads towards town; they are left behind with
the signalman as, shading his eyes with his hand, he
watches the long train sweep away into the golden distance.
*
Now, there is no time when business habits are more
mitigated than on a walking tour. And so during these
halts, as I say, you will feel almost free.
. . . If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing
better in life than to lounge before the inn door in the
sunset, or lean over the parapet of the bridge, to watch
the weeds and the quick fishes.
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