the stars. And then, perhaps, he would write
another book. He wrote only when he felt like writing.

It was this book of Insall's, "The Travels of Silas Simpkins", rather
than his "Epworth Green" or "The Hermit of Blue Mountain," that Mrs.
Maturin chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom
he was more gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas
Simpkins chose a cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from
the sea to the mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent
lakes on the Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two
chunky grey horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled
him at the rate of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had
learned the lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be
bolted. Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples
beside the stone walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of
the assortment of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert
in applied psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely
a peddler, but if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to
perceive that peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos
was in a way a sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with
theories, he never even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought
or despised his goods, or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he
may have had his ideas on the subject: it is certain that presently one
began to have one's own: nor did he exclaim with George Sand, "Il n'y
a rien de plus betement mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!"
Somehow the meannesses and jealousies were accounted for, if not
excused. To understand is to pardon.

It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of
space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself
as one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the
early summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was
the sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool
salt breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents
of roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the
landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught
by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail.

Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned
patches, stretching westward from