When night falls heavily, you
pass your last hour in listening to the under-song of the sea and the
whisper of the roaming winds among the grass. Then, if you are wise and
grateful, you thank the Giver of all, and go to sleep.
In the jolly greenwoods of the Midlands you may have enjoyment of
another kind. Some men prefer the sleepy settled villages, the sweeping
fens with their bickering windmills, the hush and placidity of old
market-towns that brood under the looming majesty of the castle. The
truth is that you cannot go anywhere in England outside of the blighted
hideous manufacturing districts without finding beauty and peace. In the
first instance you seek health and physical well-being--that goes
without saying; but the walking epicure must also have dainty thoughts,
full banquets of the mind, quiet hours wherein resolutions may be framed
in solitude and left in the soul to ripen. When the epicure returns to
the din of towns, he has a safeguard in his own breast which tends to
keep him alike from folly and melancholy. Furthermore, as he passes the
reeking dens where human beings crowd who never see flower or tree, he
feels all churlishness depart from him, and he is ready to pity and help
his less happy brethren.
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