I Looked Sullenly At The
White Ground All The Way.
And when on the far side I had got low
enough to be rid of the snow and wind and to be in the dripping rain
again, I welcomed the rain, and let it soothe like a sodden friend my
sodden uncongenial mind.
I will not write of Hospenthal. It has an old tower, and the road to
it is straight and hideous. Much I cared for the old tower! The people
of the inn (which I chose at random) cannot have loved me much.
I will not write of the St Gothard. Get it out of a guide-book. I rose
when I felt inclined; I was delighted to find it still raining. A
dense mist above the rain gave me still greater pleasure. I had
started quite at my leisure late in the day, and I did the thing
stolidly, and my heart was like a dully-heated mass of coal or iron
because I was acknowledging defeat. You who have never taken a
straight line and held it, nor seen strange men and remote places, you
do not know what it is to have to go round by the common way.
Only in the afternoon, and on those little zig-zags which are sharper
than any other in the Alps (perhaps the road is older), something
changed.
A warm air stirred the dense mist which had mercifully cut me off from
anything but the mere road and from the contemplation of hackneyed
sights.
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