Courteously Saluting Ourselves We Parted, He Remaining To Sell
Wine And I Hobbling To Rome, Now A Little Painfully And My Sack The
Heavier By A Quart Of Wine, Which, As You Probably Know, Weighs Almost
Exactly Two Pounds And A Half.
It was by this time close upon eleven, and I had long reached the
stage when some kinds of
Men begin talking of Dogged Determination,
Bull-dog pluck, the stubborn spirit of the Island race and so forth,
but when those who can boast a little of the sacred French blood are
in a mood of set despair (both kinds march on, and the mobility of
either infantry is much the same), I say I had long got to this point
of exhaustion when it occurred to me that I should need an excellent
and thorough meal at midday. But on looking at my map I found that
there was nothing nearer than this town of Charmes that was marked on
the milestones, and that was the first place I should come to in the
department of the Vosges.
It would take much too long to describe the dodges that weary men and
stiff have recourse to when they are at the close of a difficult task:
how they divide it up in lengths in their minds, how they count
numbers, how they begin to solve problems in mental arithmetic: I
tried them all. Then I thought of a new one, which is really
excellent, and which I recommend to the whole world. It is to vary the
road, suddenly taking now the fields, now the river, but only
occasionally the turnpike. This last lap was very well suited for such
a method. The valley had become more like a wide and shallow trench
than ever. The hills on either side were low and exactly even. Up the
middle of it went the river, the canal and the road, and these two
last had only a field between them; now broad, now narrow.
First on the tow-path, then on the road, then on the grass, then back
on the tow-path, I pieced out the last baking mile into Charmes, that
lies at the foot of a rather higher hill, and at last was dragging
myself up the street just as the bell was ringing the noon Angelus;
nor, however tedious you may have found it to read this final effort
of mine, can you have found it a quarter as wearisome as I did to walk
it; and surely between writer and reader there should be give and
take, now the one furnishing the entertainment and now the other.
The delightful thing in Charmes is its name. Of this name I had indeed
been thinking as I went along the last miles of that dusty and
deplorable road - that a town should be called 'Charms'.
Not but that towns, if they are left to themselves and not hurried,
have a way of settling into right names suited to the hills about them
and recalling their own fields.
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