horically as
well as literally; fresh adjustments, new subjects of discourse, new
sympathies: and the poor previous occupant meanwhile _rolling_, as the
French put it. Rolling! how well the word expresses that sense of smooth
and empty nowhere, with nothing to catch on or keep, which plays so
large a part in all our earthly experience; as, for the rest, is
natural, seeing that the earth is only a ball, at least the astronomers
say so.

But let us turn from this painful side of _going away_; and insist
rather on certain charming impressions sometimes connected with it. For
there is something charming and almost romantic, when, as in the case I
mentioned, the friend leaves friends late in the evening. There is the
whole pleasant day intact, with leisurely afternoon stroll when all is
packed and ready: watching the sunset up the estuary, picking some
flowers in the garden; sometimes even seeing the first stars prick
themselves upon the sky, and mild sheet-lightnings, auguring good, play
round the house, disclosing distant hills and villages. And the orderly
dinner, seeming more swept and garnished for the anticipation of bustle,
the light on the cloth, the sheen on the silver, the grace and fragrance
of fruit and flowers, and the gracious faces above it, remains a wide
and steady luminous vision on the black background of midnight travel,
of the train rushing through nothingness. Most charming of all, when
after the early evening on the balcony, the traveller leaves the south,
to hurtle by night, conscious only of the last impression of supper with
kind friends at Milan or the lakes, and the glimpse, in the station
light, of heads covered with veils, and flowers in the hands, and
southern evening dresses. These are the occasional gracious
compensations for that bad thing called going away.

COMING BACK

Most people tell you that to return to places where one has been
exceptionally happy is an unwise proceeding. But this, I venture to
conceive, is what poor Alfred de Musset called "une insulte au bonheur."
It shows, at all events, a lack of appreciation of the particular
nature, permanent, and, in a manner, radiating, of happy experiences. Of
course, I am not speaking of the cases where the happy past has been
severed from indifferent present and future by some dreadful calamity;
poetry alone is consolatory and also aloof enough to deal decorously
with such tragic things, and they are no concern of the essayist.