en in with Mr.
Canfield, gave me so much confidence in myself as a sort of Master of
the Road that I proceeded with altogether too much assurance.

I am firmly convinced that the prime quality to be cultivated by the
pilgrim is humility of spirit; he must be willing to accept Adventure in
whatever garb she chooses to present herself. He must be able to see the
shining form of the unusual through the dull garments of the normal.

The fact is, I walked that afternoon with my head in air and passed many
a pleasant farmstead where men were working in the fields, and many an
open doorway, and a mill or two, and a town--always looking for some
Great Adventure.

Somewhere upon this road, I thought to myself, I shall fall in with a
Great Person, or become a part of a Great Incident. I recalled with keen
pleasure the experience of that young Spanish student of Carlyle
writes in one of his volumes, who, riding out from Madrid one day, came
unexpectedly upon the greatest man in the world. This great man, of whom
Carlyle observes (I have looked up the passage since I came home), "a
kindlier, meeker, braver heart has seldom looked upon the sky in this
world," had ridden out from the city for the last time in his life "to
take one other look at the azure firmament and green mosaic pavements
and the strange carpentry and arras work of this noble palace of a
world."

As the old story has it, the young student "came pricking on hastily,
complaining that they went at such a pace as gave him little chance of
keeping up with them. One of the party made answer that the blame
lay with the horse of Don Miguel de Cervantes, whose trot was of the
speediest. He had hardly pronounced the name when the student dismounted
and, touching the hem of Cervantes' left sleeve, said, 'Yes, yes, it is
indeed the maimed perfection, the all-famous, the delightful writer, the
joy and darling of the Muses! You are that brave Miguel.'"

It may seem absurd to some in this cool and calculating twentieth
century that any one should indulge in such vain imaginings as I have
described--and yet, why not? All things are as we see them. I once heard
a man--a modern man, living to-day--tell with a hush in his voice, and
a peculiar light in his eye, how, walking in the outskirts of an
unromantic town in New Jersey, he came suddenly upon a vigorous,
bearded, rather rough-looking man swinging his stick as he walked, and
stopping often at the roadside and often looking