My nephew won the seat by over
fifty votes.
I have again exceeded the space allotted to me, and am reminded by a
ruthless publisher of the present high cost of production.
We have strayed together through many lands, and should the pictures
of these be dull or incomplete, I can but tender my apologies. I am
quite conscious, too, that I have taken full advantage of the
privilege which I claimed in the first chapter, and that I have at
times wandered wide from the track which I was following. I must plead
in extenuation that the interminable straight roads of France seem to
me less interesting than the winding country lanes of England.
Indeed, I am unable to conceive of any one walking for pleasure along
the endless vistas of the French poplar-bordered highways, where every
objective is clearly visible for miles ahead; it is the English
meandering by-roads, with their twists and turns, their unexpected and
intimate glimpses into rural life, their variety and surprises, which
tempt the pedestrian on and on. We may accept Euclid's dictum that a
straight line is the shortest road between two points; a wandering
line, if longer, is surely as a rule the more interesting.
A Scottish clerical friend of mine, the minister of a large parish in
the South of Scotland, told me that there were just two categories of
people in the world, "decent bodies" and the reverse, and that the
result of his seventy years' experience of this world was that the
"decent bodies" largely predominated.
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