there are still gentle souls uncorrupted by the victrola and the
limousine. In our old trousers and our easy shoes, with pipe and stick,
we can do our fifteen miles between lunch and dinner, and glorify the
ways of God to man.

And sometimes, about two o'clock of an afternoon (these spells come most
often about half an hour after lunch), the old angel of peregrination
lifts himself up in me, and I yearn and wamble for a season afoot. When
a blue air is moving keenly through bare boughs this angel is most
vociferous. I gape wanly round the lofty citadel where I am pretending
to earn the Monday afternoon envelope. The filing case, thermostat, card
index, typewriter, automatic telephone: these ingenious anodynes avail
me not. Even the visits of golden nymphs, sweet ambassadors of commerce,
who rustle in and out of my room with memoranda, mail, manuscripts, aye,
even these lightfoot figures fail to charm. And the mind goes out to the
endless vistas of streets, roads, fields, and rivers that summon the
wanderer with laughing voice. Somewhere a great wind is scouring the
hillsides; and once upon a time a man set out along the Great North Road
to walk to Royston in the rain....

Grant us, O Zeus! the tingling tremour of thigh and shank that comes of
a dozen sturdy miles laid underheel. Grant us "fine walking on the hills
in the direction of the sea"; or a winding road that tumbles down to
some Cotswold village. Let an inn parlour lie behind red curtains, and a
table be drawn toward the fire. Let there be a loin of cold beef, an
elbow of yellow cheese, a tankard of dog's nose. Then may we prop our
Bacon's Essays against the pewter and study those mellow words:
"Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity,
rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." _Haec studio,
pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur_.