just that gentle stimulant, that peaceful sense of change so necessary
to the tired worker. And then the fact, that you would naturally have
to select and plan out your particular line of diversion without
advice or assistance, has its own advantage. For the moment a man
takes to dinning in your ears that you ought, you really ought, to go
to Norway, you at once begin to hate Norway with a hate that ever will
be; and to have Newlyn, Cromer, or Dawlish, Carinthia or the Austrian
Tyrol jammed down your throat, is enough to initiate the discovery
that your own individual weakness is a joyous and persistent liking
for manslaughter.

Some few seem to be born without much innate tendency to crime. After
all, it is mostly a matter of heredity; these unfortunates are less
culpable than their neglectful ancestors; and it is a fault that none
need really blush for in the present. For such as they there still
remains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden
possibilities. Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or a
fire-engine -- whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant,
spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar -- what bliss to the palefaced
quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and
Chelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at sixpence a head!
Though turnpikes be things of the past, there are still tolls to be
taken on many a pleasant reach of Thames. What happiness in quiet
moments to tend the lock-keeper's flower-beds -- perhaps make love to
his daughter; anon in busier times to let the old gates swing, work
the groaning winches, and hear the water lap and suck and gurgle as it
slowly sinks or rises with its swaying freight; to dangle legs over
the side and greet old acquaintances here and there among the
parti-coloured wayfarers passing up or down; while tobacco palleth not
on the longest day, and beer is ever within easy reach. The iron