society. You are in their society, they are in yours; and the
multitudinous personal ties which connect you all to that great order
called society that you have for a period got away from physically are
present. Like the business man who goes on a vacation from business
and takes his business habits along with him, so on a journey they
would bring society along, and all sort of etiquette.

He that goes a journey shakes off the trammels of the world; he has
fled all impediments and inconveniences; he belongs, for the moment, to
no time or place. He is neither rich nor poor, but in that which he
thinks and sees. There is not such another Arcadia for this on earth
as in going a journey. He that goes a journey escapes, for a breath of
air, from all conventions; without which, though, of course, society
would go to pot; and which are the very natural instinct of women.

The best time for going a journey (a connoisseur speaks it) is some
morning when it has rained well the day or night before, and the soil
of the road, where it is not evenly packed, is of about that substance
of which the fingers can make fine "tees" for golfing. This is the
precise composition of earth and dampness underfoot most sympathetic to
the spine, the knee sockets, the muscles, tendons, ligaments of limb,
back, neck, breast and abdomen, and the spirit of locomotion in the
ancient exercise of walking. On this day the protruding stones have
been washed bald in the road; the lines and marks of drainage are still
clearly, freshly defined in the soil; in the gutters light-coloured
sand has risen to the surface with the dark moist soil in a grained
effect not unlike marbled chocolate cake; and clean, sweet gravel is
laid bare here and there in the wagon ruts. This is the chosen time
for the nerves and senses. On such a day the whole world greets one
cleansed and having on a fresh bib-and-tucker. It is a conscious