e, they like to make
the quickened currents of their blood feed a receptive and perhaps
somewhat epicurean brain. To the judicious man our lovely country
affords a veritable harvest of delights--and the delights can be gained
with very little trouble. I let the swift muscular men hurry away to the
Tyrol or the Caucasus or the Rocky Mountains, or whithersoever else they
care to go, and I turn to our own windy seashore or quiet lanes or
flushed purple moorlands. I do not much care for the babble of talk at
my elbow; but one good companion who has cultivated the art of keeping
silent is a boon. Suppose that you follow me on a roundabout journey.
Say we run northward in the train and resolve to work to the south on
foot; we start by the sea, and foot it on some fine gaudy morning over
the springy links where the grass grows gaily and the steel-coloured
bent-grass gleams like the bayonets of some vast host. The fresh wind
sings from the sea and flies through the lungs and into the pores with
an exhilarating effect like that of wine; the waves dance shoreward,
glittering as if diamonds were being pelted down from the blue arch
above; the sea-swallows sweep over the bubbling crests like flights of
silver arrows. It is very joyous. You have set off early, of course, and
the rabbits have not yet turned into their holes for their day-long
snooze. Watch quietly, and you may perhaps see how they make their fairy
rings on the grass. One frolicsome brown rogue whisks up his white tail,
and begins careering round and round; another is fired by emulation and
joins; another and another follow, and soon there is a flying ring of
merry little creatures who seem quite demented with the very pleasure of
living. One bounds into the air with a comic curvet, and comes down with
a thud; the others copy him, and there is a wild maze of coiling bodies
and gleaming white tails. But let the treacherous wind carry the scent
of you down on the little rascals and you will see a change. An old
fellow sits up like a kangaroo for an instant, looking extremely wise
and vigilant; he drops and kicks the ground with a sharp thud that can
be heard a long way off; the terror of man asserts itself in the midst
of that pure, peaceful beauty, and the whole flock dart off in agitated
fashion till they reach their holes; then they seem to look round with a
sarcastic air, for they know that you could not even raise a gun to your
shoulder in time to catch one of them b