ich marks
vigorous vitality. A London winter I dreaded, and I had good reason
for my dread. When the fog lay on the town an unbearable oppression
lay also on my spirits. Imagination had little to do with this
oppression; it was the physical result of lack of oxygen. It was the
same with my children; they grew pinched and bleached in face, and went
about their little tasks with the slowness of old men. It is stated, I
believe, that London is the healthiest city in the world; no doubt it
is true as regards the actual percentage of disease to the immense
population, but statistics take no account of lowered vitality.
Without being actually ill, vitality may be reduced to a point at which
existence becomes a kind of misery. Alcohol dissolves for a time the
cloud on the mind, the incubus upon the energies; and the relief is so
great that men do not think of the price they pay for it. No wonder
public-houses are the landmarks of London locomotion; they are the
Temples of Oblivion, where the devitalised multitudes seek to forget
themselves, that they may regain the courage to live at all.

For myself, I had sense to know that stimulants of this kind were a
remedy much worse than the disease. The only stimulant, at once safe
and effectual, which I needed was fresh air. The moment I found myself
among the hills a miraculous change was wrought in me. I had not
breathed that quick and vital air for an hour before a glow ran through
my veins more delightful, and much more enduring, than the glow of
wine. A single night in some small cottage chamber--where the very bed
had a cool scent of flowers and lawns, where the open window admitted
air fresh from pine forest and mountain streams, where the silence was
so deep that one's pulse seemed to tick aloud like a watch--and I awoke
a man renewed. Six o'clock, or even five, was not too soon for all my
little household to be astir. We were all alike eager for the open
air; for the walk, bare-footed, through the dewy grass to the mountain
pool; for the shock and thrill of that green water into which we
plunged delighted; and in those prolonged and pure ablations I think
our spirits shared. The bells of laughter rang the livelong day. The
cramped mind began to move again, and long abdicated powers of fancy
and of humour were restored. Equanimity of body brought evenness of
temper; it was incredible to recollect how irritable we had been with
one another in those ghastly days