walls into many decorative shapes until it melts into purple, and fainter and fainter and still fainter purple Japanese hills. The sight is some of the noble quarry, the game; this is the anise-seed bag of him that goes a journey. Some glimmering of the nobility of the plan of which he is a fell, erring speck comes over one as he looks. This is the religious side of going a journey.

It is best to go a journey on a road that you do not know; on a road that lures you on to peep over the crest of yonder hill, that ever flees before you in a game of hide-and-seek, disappearing behind great, jutting rocks and turns and trees, to leap out again at your approach and laughingly, elusively, continually slip before you; a road that winds anon where some roaring brook pours near by; a road that may deceive you and trick you into miles out of your way.

A high breeze rushes through the trees and fans the traveller's opened pores. With a sudden, startling whir, mounting with their hearts, a bird flushes from the tangled growth at the roadside.

The worst roads for walking are such as are commonly called the best; that is, macadam. A macadam pavement is a piece of masonry, wholly without elasticity, built for vehicles to roll over. To go a journey without a walking-stick much would be lost; indeed it would be folly. A stick is the fly-wheel of the engine. Something is needed to whack things with, little stones, wormy apples, and so forth, in the road. It can be changed from one hand to the other, which is a great help. Then if one slips a trifle on a down-grade turn it is a lengthened arm thrown out to steady one. It is the pilgrim's staff. On the up-grades it assists climbing. It is a weapon of defence if such should ever be needed. It is a badge of dignity, a dress sword. It is the sceptre of walking.

Dipping the dales, riding the swells, the automobiles come, like gigantic bugs coming after the wicked. With a sucking rush of wind and dust and an odour of gasoline they are past. Stray pieces of paper at the roadside arise and fly after them, then, further on, sink impotent, exhausted.

"I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another!" One who goes much a-journeying cannot understand how Thoreau got it so completely turned around. But after the first effervescence of going a journey (of speech a time of times) has passed, and when, next, the fine novelty of open observation has begun to pale, there are still copious resources left; one retires on the way, metaphorically speaking, into one's closet for meditation, for miles of silent thought—when one's stride is mechanical, and is like an absent-minded drumming with the fingers; but that it is better, for it pumps the blood for freer thought than in lethargic sitting.

In this rhythmic moving one thinks as to a tune. To sit thus absolutely silent, absent in thought completely, even with that friend one wears in one's heart's core, will at length become dull for one or other; sitting thus one is tempted, too, to speech. Walking, it is not so. One may talk or one may not. If both wish to think, both feel as if something sociable is being done in just walking together. If one does not care to go wool-gathering, the other does not leave him without entertainment; walking alone is entertainment. It is assumed, of course, that one goes a journey in silence as in speech with the companion with whom one has been best seasoned. Silently walking, the movement of the mind keeps step in thought exactly with the movement of the man, so that the pace is a thermometer of the temperature at that moment of one's brain.

One who has written on going a journey as well perhaps as the world will ever see it done owned that he never had had a watch. Further, he intimated that the possession of one was an indication of poverty of mental resource. It was his own wont, he said, to pass hours, whole days, unconscious of the night of time. He described his father as taking out his watch to look at whenever he could think of nothing else to do. His father, our author says, was no metaphysician. It must be confessed that one now writing of journeys, sometimes, somewhat unmetaphysician-like, conscious of the flight of time, has communication with a watch; and, finding the day well advanced, decides, speaking very figuratively, to lay the cloth, beneath some twisted, low, gnarled apple tree.

"At the next shadow," he suggests.

"Let's wait until we get to the top of this hill, first."

"Here we are."

Sweet rest! when one throws one's members down upon the turf and there lets them lie, as if they were so many detached packages dropped. Then one feels the exquisite nerve luxury of having legs: while one rests them. One's back could lie thus prone forever. One feels, sucking all the rich pleasure of it, that one couldn't move one's arms, lift one's hand, if one had to. What are the world's rewards if this is not one!

At length in going a journey comes a time when one tiredly shrinks from the work of speech, when observation dozes, and thought lolls like a limp sail that only idly stirs at the passing zephyrs; the legs like piston-rods strike on; when the pleasure is like that almost of dull narcotics; one realises only dimly that one is moving. At such times as these, coming from one knows not whence, and one feels too weak to search back to discover, there flit across the mind strange fragments, relevant, as they seem, to nothing whatever present.

When a journey has been made one way, the trick has been done; the superfluous energy which inspired it has found escape; the way to return is not by walking. A friend to fatigue is this, that in walking back one is not on a voyage of discovery; one knows the way and very much what one will see on it; one knows the distance. In fact, the fruit has been plucked: the bloom is gone; to walk back would be like tedious marching with a regiment. One should return resting. On trains one returns from a journey.

Whoso hath life, one thinks as his journey draws to its close, let him live it! What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and never know his own soul?

III

GOING TO ART EXHIBITIONS

There are two opposing views as to going to art exhibitions. And much with a good deal of reason may be said on both sides. There is one very vigorous attitude which holds that the pictures are the thing. This, indeed, is a perfectly ponderable theory. But it may be questioned whether in its ardour it does not go a little far. For it affirms that people are a confounded nuisance at art exhibitions, and should not be permitted to be there, to distract one's attention from the peaceful contemplation of works of art, and to infuriate one by their asinine remarks in the holy presence of beauty. I have heard it declared with very impressive spirit, and reasoned with much force, that only one person, or at most only one person and his chosen companion, should be allowed in an art gallery at a time. It is debatable, however, whether this intellectually aristocratic idea is altogether practicable. On the other hand, was it not even Little Billie who found the people at art exhibitions frequently more interesting than the pictures?

Anyhow, persons who write about art exhibitions confine themselves exclusively to the subject of art. When they gossip it is about the pictures, the painters, and the sculpture. True, of course, this is their job, and then, these persons go on press days and so only see, outside of that which is intentionally exhibited, other critics.

Now, there is nothing in all the world quite like art exhibitions. Beyond any other sort of show they possess a spirit which (to use a pet and