oks, so genuine a love of
"nature." Says Mr. Petulengro: "There's night and day, brother, both
sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's
likewise the wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would
wish to die?"

One of the most precious memories of my younger manhood is brought
back to me as I write those words. It was a Sunday afternoon in late
autumn, in one of those unfrequented ways which slant off from the
Great North Road beyond Hadley Heath, where the green turf bordered
the brown road and the leaves covered the earth beneath the trees with
a carpet of flaming cloth-of-gold. I had left my book and bicycle to
one side, and, seated upon a low grey stone wall, I watched the sun go
down. Behind me, across the intervening meadows, rose clouds of dust,
redolent of waste gases, where thundered an ever-increasing traffic of
swift vehicles. In front a vaporous mist was rising from the land; the
shadows broadened, and the red western glow grew deeper, while in the
middle distance a tiny child, clad in green cloak and little red hood,
stood conning her Sunday story--a jewel of quiet colour in the
gathering autumn twilight. And so, as I listened to the roar from the
macadamed highway and looked out upon that evening glory, it was as
though I heard, far off, the throbbing pulse of the great world's
mighty hand, while I sat still in the heart of it.

"Life is very sweet, brother: who would wish to die?"

XIX

Is all this too bookish for an ocean tramp? Alas! I fear I grow too
cocksure of my literary attainments out here, with none to check me.
It is in London where a man finds his true level in the book world, as
Johnson shrewdly observed. In the evening, when we are gathered over
the fire, and opinions fly across and rebound, when one hears bookmen
talk of books, and painters talk of art--that is the time when I feel
myself so unutterably insignificant. Often I have looked across at
T----, or G----, or ----, someone I know even better than them, and I
feel discouraged. You men have _done_ things, while I--well, I talk
about doing things, and try, feebly enough, to make my talking good;
but to what end? T---- has his work in many a public building and
sacred edifice; G---- has his books on our tables and in the
circulating libraries; and you have done things, too, in dramatic
literature.

Meanwhile I am an engine-driver on the high seas! I know my work is in
the end as hon