ature should get up with the worm and bird. A man
of my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years,
was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic.

And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksack
strapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his
shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with
swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before
you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his
horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there
he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or
sluggish thoughts go through your brain--plots and vagrant fancies,
which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hours
while the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap into
your mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants.

There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson has
written of these. "You come," he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, or
some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the
knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into
yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke
dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the
sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and
turns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an
evil conscience."

And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M---- and
I, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountain
road to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambled
up Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such an
outlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with their
ninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmed
with mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke upon
the river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountain
road that runs to West Point. During all the day there had been
distant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-off
valley,--or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at their
game,--but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was six
o'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go,
and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in the
dusk we saw the lights of We