alone with the south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling of
larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noonday
stillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the
blue. Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the sky,
his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges at
will among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earth
no longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so
below him the thing still ``spins like a fretful midge.'' The Loafer
knows not nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through golden
spaces of imagination his soul is winging her untrammelled flight. And
there he really might remain for ever, but that his vagrom spirit is
called back to earth by a gentle but resistless, very human summons,
-- a gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian, god-like, thirst: a thirst to
thank Heaven on. So, with a sigh half of regret, half of anticipation,
he bends his solitary steps towards the nearest inn. Tobacco for one
is good; to commune with oneself and be still is truest wisdom; but
beer is a thing of deity -- beer is divine.

Later the Loafer may decently make some concession to popular taste by
strolling down to the river and getting out his boat. With one paddle
out he will drift down the stream: just brushing the flowering rush
and the meadow-sweet and taking in as peculiar gifts the varied sweets
of even. The loosestrife is his, and the arrow-head: his the distant
moan of the weir; his are the glories, amber and scarlet and silver,
of the sunset-haunted surface. By-and-by the boaters will pass him
homeward-bound. All are blistered and sore: his withers are unwrung.
Most are too tired and hungry to see the sunset glories; no corporeal
pangs clog his æsthesis -- his perceptive faculty. Some have
quarrelled in the day and are no longer on speaking terms; he is at
peace with himself and with the whole world. Of all that lay them down