ite another book. He wrote
only when he felt like writing.

It was this book of Insall's, "The Travels of Silas Simpkins", rather
than his "Epworth Green" or "The Hermit of Blue Mountain," that Mrs.
Maturin chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom he
was more gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas Simpkins
chose a cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from the sea to
the mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent lakes on the
Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two chunky grey
horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled him at the rate
of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had learned the
lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be bolted. Silas
cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the stone
walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment of
goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied
psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but
if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that
peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos was in a way a
sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with theories, he never
even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought or despised his goods,
or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he may have had his ideas
on the subject: it is certain that presently one began to have one's own:
nor did he exclaim with George Sand, "Il n'y a rien de plus betement
mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!" Somehow the meannesses and
jealousies were accounted for, if not excused. To understand is to
pardon.

It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of
space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself as
one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the early
summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was the
sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool salt
breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents of
roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the
landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught
by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail.

Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned
patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty and
colour