an unattached creature can go in a new direction with a new wind. The
merry beggar was the only adventurer free to yield to the lighter touches
of chance, the touches that a habit of resistance has made imperceptible
to the seated and stable social world.

The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our
literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, by
tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has been
stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, led
underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys of the song of
the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to capture, have
ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world's ears. But it seems
that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy beggar is still the
subject of a Spanish song.

That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw's or a robber's, it is
not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling note of a man
who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill-fortune, but takes
it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it at the hand of
unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own choice of bonds,
but has not broken his own by force. It seems, therefore, the song of an
indomitable liberty of movement, light enough for the puffs of a zephyr
chance.




AT MONASTERY GATES