olving, horizontal wheel with its hub at the horizon. It is different
when you travel fast through half open bush, so that the eye on its way
to the edge of the visible world looks past trees and shrubs. In that
case there are two points which speed along: you yourself, and with you,
engaged, as it were, in a race with you, the distance. You can go many
miles before your horizon changes. But between it and yourself the
foreground is rushed back like a ribbon. There is no impression of
wheeling; there is no depth to that ribbon which moves backward and
past. You are also more distinctly aware that it is not the objects near
you which move, but you yourself. Only a short distance from you trees
and objects seem rather to move with you, though more slowly; and faster
and faster all things seem to be moving in the same direction with you,
the farther away they are, till at last the utmost distance rushes along
at an equal speed, behind all the stems of the shrubs and the trees, and
keeps up with you.

So is it truly in life. My childhood seems as near to me now as it was
when I was twenty--nearer, I sometimes think; but the years of my
early manhood have rushed by like that ribbon and are half swallowed by
oblivion.

This line of thought threw me back into heavier moods. And yet, since
now I banished the hardest of all thoughts hard to bear, I could not
help succumbing to the influence of Nature's merry mood. I did so even
more than I liked. I remember that, while driving through the beautiful
natural park that masks the approach to the one-third-way town from
the south, I as much as reproached myself because I allowed Nature to
interfere with my grim purpose of speed. Half intentionally I conjured
up the vision of an infinitely lonesome old age for myself, and again
the sudden palpitation in my veins nearly prompted me to send my horses
into a gallop. But instantly I checked myself. Not yet, I thought. On
that long stretch north, beyond the bridge, there I was going to drive
them at their utmost speed. I was unstrung, I told myself; this was
mere sentimentalism; no emotional impulses were of any value; careful
planning only counted. So I even pulled the horses back to a walk. I
wanted to feed them shortly after reaching the stable. They must not be
hot, or I should have trouble.

Then we turned into the main street of the town. In front of the stable
I deliberately assumed the air of a man of leisure. The hostler came ou