e and freedom, and for the moment
only. For here, all is absent that can stimulate to moral feeling. Such
people as you see may be old, or toil-worn, or sorry; but you see them
framed in the forest, like figures on a painted canvas; and for you,
they are not people in any living and kindly sense. You forget the grim
contrariety of interests. You forget the narrow lane where all men
jostle together in unchivalrous contention, and the kennel, deep and
unclean, that gapes on either hand for the defeated. Life is simple
enough, it seems, and the very idea of sacrifice becomes like a mad
fancy out of a last night's dream.

Your ideal is not perhaps high, but it is plain and possible. You become
enamoured of a life of change and movement and the open air, where the
muscles shall be more exercised than the affections. When you have had
your will of the forest, you may visit the whole round world. You may
buckle on your knapsack and take the road on foot. You may bestride a
good nag, and ride forth, with a pair of saddle-bags, into the enchanted
East. You may cross the Black Forest, and see Germany widespread before
you, like a map, dotted with old cities, walled and spired, that dream
all day on their own reflections in the Rhine or Danube. You may pass
the spinal cord of Europe and go down from Alpine glaciers to where
Italy extends her marble moles and glasses her marble palaces in the
midland sea. You may sleep in flying trains or wayside taverns. You may
be awakened at dawn by the scream of the express or the small pipe of
the robin in the hedge. For you the rain should allay the dust of the
beaten road; the wind dry your clothes upon you as you walked. Autumn
should hang out russet pears and purple grapes along the lane; inn after
inn proffer you their cups of raw wine; river by river receive your body
in the sultry noon. Wherever you went warm valleys and high trees and
pleasant villages should compass you about; and light fellowships should
take you by the arm, and walk with you an hour upon your way. You may
see from afar off what it will come to in the end--the weather-beaten
red-nosed vagabond, consumed by a fever of the feet, cut off from all
near touch of human sympathy, a waif, an Ishmael, and an outcast. And
yet it will seem well--and yet, in the air of the forest, this will seem
the best--to break all the network bound about your feet by birth and
old companionship and loyal love, and bear your shovelful of phosp