I applaud those who, on a walking trip, arise and begin their journey in the dawn, but although I am eager at night to make an early start, yet I blink and growl when the morning comes. I marvel at the poet who was abroad so early that he was able to write of the fresh twilight on the world—"Where the sandalled Dawn like a Greek god takes the hurdles of the hills"—but for my own part I would have slept and missed the sight. But an early hour is best, despite us lazybones, and to be on the road before the dew is gone and while yet a mist arises from the hollows is to know the journey's finest pleasure.
Persons of early hours assert that they feel a fine exaltation. I am myself inclined to think, however, that this is not so much an exaltation that arises from the beauty of the hour, as from a feeling of superiority over their sleeping and inferior comrades. It is akin to the displeasing vanity of those persons who walk upon a boat with easy stomach while their companions lie below. I would discourage, therefore, persons that lean toward conceit from putting a foot out of bed until the second call. On the other hand, those who are of a self-depreciative nature should get up with the worm and bird. a man of my own acquaintance who was sunk in self-abasement for many years, was roused to a salutary conceit by no other tonic.
And it is certain that to be off upon a journey with a rucksack strapped upon you at an hour when the butcher boy takes down his shutters is a high pleasure. Off you go through the village with swinging arms. Off you go across the country. A farmer is up before you and you hear his reaper across the field, and the neighing of his horses at the turn. Where the hill falls sharp against the sky, there he stands outlined, to wipe the sweat. And as your nature is, swift or sluggish thoughts go through your brain—plots and vagrant fancies, which later your pencil will not catch. It is in these earliest hours while the dew still glistens that little lyric sentences leap into your mind. Then, if at all, are windmills giants.
There are cool retreats where you may rest at noon, but Stevenson has written of these. "You come," he writes, "to a milestone on a hill, or some place where deep ways meet under trees; and off goes the knapsack, and down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink into yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and turns aside your open shirt. if you are not happy, you must have an evil conscience."
And yet a good inn at night holds even a more tranquil joy. M—— and I, who frequently walk upon a holiday, traversed recently a mountain road to the north of West Point. During the afternoon we had scrambled up Storm King to a bare rock above the Hudson. It was just such an outlook as Rip found before he met the outlandish Dutchmen with their ninepins and flagon. We lay here above a green world that was rimmed with mountains, and watched the lagging sails and puffs of smoke upon the river. It was late afternoon when we descended to the mountain road that runs to West Point. During all the day there had been distant rumbling of thunder, as though a storm mustered in a far-off valley,—or perhaps the Dutchmen of the legend still lingered at their game,—but now as the twilight fell the storm came near. It was six o'clock when a sign-board informed us that we had seven miles to go, and already the thunder sounded with earnest purpose. Far below in the dusk we saw the lights of West Point. On a sudden, while I was still fumbling for my poncho which was rolled inside my rucksack, the storm burst upon us. We put up the umbrella and held the poncho against the wind and driving rain. But the wind so whisked it about and the rain was so eager to find the openings that presently we were drenched. In an hour we came to West Point. luckily the cook was up, and she served us a hot dinner in our rooms with the washstand for a table. When we started there was a piece of soap in the dish, but I think we ate it in our hunger. I recall that there was one course that foamed up like custard and was not upon the bill. It was a plain room with meager furniture, yet we fell asleep with a satisfaction beyond the Cecils in their lordly beds. I stirred once when there was a clamor in the hall of guests returning from a hop at the Academy—a prattle of girls' voices—then slept until the sun was up.
But my preference in lodgings is the low sagging half-timbered building that one finds in the country towns of England. It has leaned against the street and dispensed hospitality for three hundred years. It is as old a citizen as the castle on the hill. It is an inn where Tom Jones might have spent the night, or any of the rascals out of Smollett. Behind the wicket there sits a shrewish female with a cold eye towards your defects, and behind her there is a row of bells which jangle when water is wanted in the rooms. Having been assigned a room and asked the hour of dinner, you mount a staircase that rises with a squeak. There is a mustiness about the place, which although it is unpleasant in itself, is yet agreeable in its circumstance. A long hall runs off to the back of the house, with odd steps here and there to throw you. Your room looks out upon a coach-yard, and as you wash you overhear a love-passage down below.
In the evening you go forth to see the town. If it lies on the ocean, you walk upon the mole and watch the fisher folk winding up their nets, or sitting with tranquil pipes before their doors. Maybe a booth has been set up on the parade that runs along the ocean, and a husky fellow bids you lay out a sixpence for the show, which is the very same, he bawls, as was played before the King and the Royal Family. This speech is followed by a fellow with a trombone, who blows himself very red in the face.
But rather I choose to fancy that it is an inland town, and that there is a quieter traffic on the streets. Here for an hour after dinner, while darkness settles, you wander from shop to shop and put your nose upon the glass, or you engage the lamplighter as he goes his rounds, for any bit of news.
Once in such a town when the night brought rain, for want of other employment, I debated divinity with a rigid parson, and until a late hour sat in the thick curtain of his attack. It was at an inn of one of the midland counties of England, a fine old weathered building, called "The King's Arms." In the tap—for I thrust my thirsty head inside—was an array of old pewter upon the walls, and two or three prints of prize fighters of former days. But it was in the parlor the parson engaged me. In the corner of the room there was a timid fire—of the kind usually met in English inns—imprisoned behind a grill that had been set up stoutly to confine a larger and rowdier fire. My antagonist was a tall lank man of pinched ascetic face and dark complexion, with clothes brushed to shininess, and he belonged to a brotherhood that lived in one of the poorer parts of London along the wharves. His sojourn at the inn was forced. For two weeks in the year, he explained, each member was cast out of the conventual buildings upon the world. This was done in penance, as the members of more rigid orders in the past were flagellants for a season. So here for a whole week had he been sitting, for the most part in rainy weather, busied with the books that the inn afforded—advertising booklets of the beauties of the Alps—diagrams of steamships—and peeking out of doors for a change of sky.