قراءة كتاب Days Off, and Other Digressions
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
DAYS OFF
AND OTHER DIGRESSIONS
By
HENRY VAN DYKE
I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me:
Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with Time?
For this the day was made.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MDCCCCVII
Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Printed in October, 1907
Reprinted in November, 1907
Reprinted in December, 1907
To
MY FRIEND AND NEIGHBOUR
GROVER CLEVELAND
WHOSE YEARS OF GREAT WORK
AS A STATESMAN
HAVE BEEN CHEERED BY DAYS OF GOOD PLAY
AS A FISHERMAN
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH WARM AND DEEP REGARDS
CONTENTS
| I. | Days Off | 1 |
| II. | A Holiday in a Vacation | 23 |
| III. | His Other Engagement | 57 |
| IV. | Books that I Loved as a Boy | 101 |
| V. | Among the Quantock Hills | 117 |
| VI. | Between the Lupin and the Laurel | 139 |
| VII. | Little Red Tom | 177 |
| VIII. | Silverhorns | 193 |
| IX. | Notions about Novels | 221 |
| X. | Some Remarks on Gulls | 233 |
| XI. | Leviathan | 271 |
| XII. | The Art of Leaving Off | 309 |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily or lazily | Frontispiece |
| Facing page | |
| On such a carry travel is slow | 36 |
| A notion to go down stream struck the salmon | 88 |
| There was the gleam of an immense mass of silver in its meshes | 94 |
| Tannery Combe, Holford | 126 |
| "Billy began to call, and it was beautiful" | 206 |
| There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart | 218 |
| She took the oars and rowed me slowly around the shore | 266 |
DAYS OFF
"A DAY OFF" said my Uncle Peter, settling down in his chair before the open wood-fire, with that air of complacent obstinacy which spreads over him when he is about to confess and expound his philosophy of life,—"a day off is a day that a man takes to himself."
"You mean a day of luxurious solitude," I said, "a stolen sweet of time, which he carries away into some hidden corner to enjoy alone,—a little-Jack-Horner kind of a day?"
"Not at all," said my Uncle Peter; "solitude is a thing which a man hardly ever enjoys by himself. He may practise it from a sense of duty. Or he may take refuge in it from other things that are less tolerable. But nine times out of ten he will find that he can't get a really good day to himself unless he shares it with some one else; if he takes it alone, it will be a heavy day, a chain-and-ball day,—anything but a day off."
"Just what do you mean, then?" I asked, knowing that nothing would please him better than the chance to discover his own meaning against a little background of apparent misunderstanding and opposition.
"I mean," said my Uncle Peter, in that deliberate manner which lends a flavour of deep wisdom to the most obvious remarks, "I mean that every man owes it to himself to have some days in his life when he escapes from bondage, gets away from routine, and does something which