hat Keats thought of his:

Though the most beautiful Creature were waiting for me at
the end of a Journey or a Walk; though the Carpet were of
Silk, the Curtains of the morning Clouds; the chairs and
Sofa stuffed with Cygnet's down; the food Manna, the Wine
beyond Claret, the Window opening on Winander mere, I should
not feel--or rather my Happiness would not be so fine, as my
Solitude is sublime. Then instead of what I have described,
there is a sublimity to welcome me home--The roaring of the
wind is my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my
Children.... I feel more and more every day, as my
imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world
alone but in a thousand worlds--No sooner am I alone than
shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve
my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's
body-guard.... I live more out of England than in it. The
Mountains of Tartary are a favorite lounge, if I happen to
miss the Alleghany ridge, or have no whim for Savoy.

This last sentence not only reveals the fact that the Auto-Comrade,
equipped as he is with a wishing-mat, is the very best cicerone in the
world, but also that he is the ideal tramping companion. Suppose you
are mountain-climbing. As you start up into "nature's observatory," he
kneels in the dust and fastens wings upon your feet. He conveniently
adjusts a microscope to your hat-brim, and hangs about your neck an
excellent telescope. He has enough sense, too, to keep his mouth
closed. For, like Hazlitt, he "can see no wit in walking and talking."
The joy of existence, you find, rarely tastes more cool and sweet and
sparkling than when you and your Auto-Comrade make a picnic thus,
swinging in a basket between you a real, live thought for lunch. On
such a day you come to believe that Keats, on another occasion, must
have had his own Auto-Comrade in mind when he remarked to his friend
Solitude that

"... it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee."

The Auto-Comrade can sit down with you in thick weather on a barren
lighthouse rock and give you a breathless day by hanging upon the
walls of fog the mellow screeds of old philosophies, and causing to
march and countermarch over against them the scarlet and purple
pageants of history. Hour by hour, too, he will l