run across the sea, carefully carrying with them the same tiresome
mind that worried them at home. They got a change of air by making
an alteration of life. They escaped from the land of Egypt by
stepping out into the wilderness and going a-fishing.

The people who always live in houses, and sleep on beds, and walk on
pavements, and buy their food from butchers and bakers and grocers,
are not the most blessed inhabitants of this wide and various earth.
The circumstances of their existence are too mathematical and secure
for perfect contentment. They live at second or third hand. They
are boarders in the world. Everything is done for them by somebody
else.

It is almost impossible for anything very interesting to happen to
them. They must get their excitement out of the newspapers, reading
of the hairbreadth escapes and moving accidents that befall people
in real life. What do these tame ducks really know of the adventure
of living? If the weather is bad, they are snugly housed. If it is
cold, there is a furnace in the cellar. If they are hungry, the
shops are near at hand. It is all as dull, flat, stale, and
unprofitable as adding up a column of figures. They might as well
be brought up in an incubator.

But when man abides in tents, after the manner of the early
patriarchs, the face of the world is renewed. The vagaries of the
clouds become significant. You watch the sky with a lover's look,
eager to know whether it will smile or frown. When you lie at night
upon your bed of boughs and hear the rain pattering on the canvas
close above your head, you wonder whether it is a long storm or only
a shower.