Reader, possibly on one of your country walks you have come upon a man with
his back against a hedge, tormented by a fiend in the likeness of a dog.
You yourself, of course, are not a coward. You possess that cornerstone of
virtue, a love for animals. If at your heels a dog sniffs and growls, you
humor his mistake, you flick him off and proceed with unbroken serenity. It
is scarcely an interlude to your speculation on the market. Or if you work
upon a sonnet and are in the vein, your thoughts, despite the beast, run
unbroken to a rhyme. But pity this other whose heart is less stoutly
wrapped! He has gone forth on a holiday to take the country air, to thrust
himself into the freer wind, to poke with his stick for such signs of
Spring as may be hiding in the winter's leaves. Having been grinding in an
office he flings himself on the great round world. He has come out to smell
the earth. Or maybe he seeks a hilltop for a view of the fields that lie
below patched in many colors, as though nature had been sewing at her
garments and had mended the cloth from her bag of scraps.

On such a journey this fellow is travelling when, at a turn of the road, he
hears the sound of barking. As yet there is no dog in sight. He pauses. He
listens. How shall one know whether the sound comes up a wrathful gullet or
whether the dog bays at him impersonally, as at the distant moon? Or maybe
he vents himself upon a stubborn cow. Surely it is not an idle tune he
practices. He holds a victim in his mind. There is sour venom on his
churlish tooth. Is it best to go roundabout, or forward with such a nice
compound of innocence, boldness and modesty as shall satisfy the beast? If
one engross oneself on something that lies to the lee of danger, it allays
suspicion. Or if one absorb oneself upon the flora--a primrose on the
river's brim--it shows him clear and stainless. The stupidest dog should
see that so close a student can have no evil in him. Perhaps it would be