thers might and would consume
themselves in fevers of avarice, and surfeits of luxury,--but for him
such temporary pleasures were past. He desired a complete change,--a
change of surroundings, a change of associations--and for this, what
could be more excellent or more wholesome than a taste of poverty? In
his time he had met men who, worn out with the constant fight of the
body's materialism against the soul's idealism, had turned their backs
for ever on the world and its glittering shows, and had shut themselves
up as monks of "enclosed" or "silent" orders,--others he had known, who,
rushing away from what we call civilisation, had encamped in the
backwoods of America, or high up among the Rocky Mountains, and had
lived the lives of primeval savages in their strong craving to assert a
greater manliness than the streets of cities would allow them to
enjoy,--and all were moved by the same mainspring of action,--the
overpowering spiritual demand within themselves which urged them to
break loose from cowardly conventions and escape from Sham. He could not
compete with younger men in taking up wild sport and "big game" hunting
in far lands, in order to give free play to the natural savage
temperament which lies untamed at the root of every man's individual
being,--and he had no liking for "monastic" immurements. But he longed
for liberty,--liberty to go where he liked without his movements being
watched and commented upon by a degraded "personal" press,--liberty to
speak as he felt and do as he wished, without being compelled to weigh
his words, or to consider his actions. Hence--he had decided on his
present course, though how that course was likely to shape itself in its
progress he had no very distinct idea. His actual plan was to walk to
Cornwall, and there find out the native home of his parents, not so much
for sentiment's sake as for the necessity of having a definite object or
goal in view. And the reason of his determination to go "on the road,"
as it were, was simply that he wished to test for himself the actual
happiness or misery experienced by the very poor as contrasted with the
supposed joys of the very wealthy. This scheme had been working in his
brain for the past year or more,--all his business arrangements had been
made in such a way as to enable him to carry it out satisfactorily to
himself without taking any one else into his confidence. The only thing
that might possibly have deterred him from his quixo