on the bank. For a year or more he lay, and dated his recovery of tone
from the moment of finding out the nature of his disaster. "She was
hungry, and I fed her. She was thirsty, and I gave her drink. The Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed, by all means, be the name of
the Lord."

He proposed now to resume his former life of sojourn in tents and
desultory practice of the arts, a life which, as it was at once highly
practical and entirely dependent upon enjoyment, we may call one of
contemplative activity. For twenty years he had not lived in a house,
slept in a bed, or owned anything beyond the barest necessities. (The only
thing he had, indeed, found himself owning, had at last removed itself.)
He had been by turns poet, painter-in-water-colours, tinker, botaniser,
antinomian, and anarchist; and attributed his success in all these busy
walks to the fact that he was as strongly averse to the possession of
property as he was incapable of getting any. Here, then, was his capital,
with which to commence the world again.

With this at his back, you would have said, he had but to pack his
knapsack, stow his tent, and take to the road. But that was not so.

He had, with the purest intentions, broken all the laws of Society.
Entitled to a competence, he had had neither house nor gear, earned just
so much as would keep him in food. He knew what it was to go without a
dinner, and what to sleep under the stars. Yet he had been extraordinarily
happy. He had held up his head, and kept it, alike with the learned--for
he had learning--and with the simple, whose simplicity he shared. He had
had the knack, in fact, of getting himself accepted on his own terms,
exorbitant as they were; and of both rich and poor alike he had demanded
entire equality. "Barefoot I stand," had been his proposition, "of level