One who has written on going a journey as well perhaps as the world
will ever see it done owned that he never had had a watch. Further, he
intimated that the possession of one was an indication of poverty of
mental resource. It was his own wont, he said, to pass hours, whole
days, unconscious of the night of time. He described his father as
taking out his watch to look at whenever he could think of nothing else
to do. His father, our author says, was no metaphysician. It must be
confessed that one now writing of journeys, sometimes, somewhat
unmetaphysician-like, conscious of the flight of time, has
communication with a watch; and, finding the day well advanced,
decides, speaking very figuratively, to lay the cloth, beneath some
twisted, low, gnarled apple tree.

"At the next shadow," he suggests.

"Let's wait until we get to the top of this hill, first."

"Here we are."

Sweet rest! when one throws one's members down upon the turf and there
lets them lie, as if they were so many detached packages dropped. Then
one feels the exquisite nerve luxury of having legs: while one rests
them. One's back could lie thus prone forever. One feels, sucking all
the rich pleasure of it, that one couldn't move one's arms, lift one's
hand, if one had to. What are the world's rewards if this is not one!

At length in going a journey comes a time when one tiredly shrinks from
the work of speech, when observation dozes, and thought lolls like a
limp sail that only idly stirs at the passing zephyrs; the legs like
piston-rods strike on; when the pleasure is like that almost of dull