flow of thoughts instead
of the miserable trickle that ordinarily serves your business purposes and
keeps you from under the trolley cars.

But all truantry is not in the open air. I know a man who while it is yet
winter will get out his rods and fit them together as he sits before the
fire. Then he will swing his arm forward from the elbow. The table has
become his covert and the rug beyond is his pool. And sometimes even when
the rod is not in his hand he will make the motion forward from the elbow
and will drop his thumb. It will show that he has jumped the seasons and
that he stands to his knees in an August stream.

It was but yesterday on my return from work that I witnessed a sight that
moved me pleasantly to thoughts of truantry. Now, in all points a grocer's
wagon is staid and respectable. Indeed, in its adherence to the business
of the hour we might use it as a pattern. For six days in the week it
concerns itself solely with its errands of mercy--such "whoas" and running
up the kitchen steps with baskets of potatoes--such poundings on the
door--such golden wealth of melons as it dispenses. Though there may be a
kind of gayety in this, yet I'll hazard that in the whole range of
quadricycle life no vehicle is more free from any taint of riotous
conduct. Mark how it keeps its Sabbath in the shed! Yet here was this
sturdy Puritan tied by a rope to a motor-car and fairly bounding down the
street. It was a worse breach than when Noah was drunk within his tent.
Was it an instance of falling into bad company? It was Nym, you remember,
who set Master Slender on to drinking. "And I be drunk again," quoth he,
"I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with drunken
knaves." Or rather did not every separate squeak of the grocer's wagon cry
out a truant disposition? After years of repression here was its chance at
last. And with what a joyous rollic, with what a lively clatter, with what
a hilarious reeling, as though in gay defiance of the law of gravity, was
it using its liberty! Had it been a hearse in a runaway, the comedy would
not have been better. If I had been younger I would have pelted after and
climbed in over the tailboard to share the reckless pitch of its
enfranchisement.

Then there is a truantry that I mention with hesitation, for it comes
close to the heart of my desire, and in such matter particularly I would
not wish to appear a fool to my fellows. The child has this truantry when
he