If It Had Been Lighter I
Should Have Looked At The Roof For An Effigy Of A Semi-Human
Toad-Like Creature Smiling Down Mockingly At The Worshippers
As They Came And Went.
On departing it struck me that it would assuredly be a mistake
to return to this village and look at it again by the common
lights of day.
No, it was better to keep the impressions I
had gathered unspoilt; even to believe, if I could, that no
such place existed, but that it had existed exactly as I had
found it, even to the unruly choir-boys, the ascetic-looking
priest with a strange light in his eyes, and the worshippers
who kept pet toads in the church. They were not precisely
like people of the twentieth century. As for the eccentric
middle-aged or elderly person whose portrait adorned the west
window, she was not the lady I knew something about, but
another older Lady Y - , who flourished some six or seven
centuries ago.
Chapter Three: Walking and Cycling
We know that there cannot be progression without
retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; and often
on my wheel, when flying along the roads at a reckless rate of
very nearly nine miles an hour, I have regretted that time of
limitations, galling to me then, when I was compelled to go on
foot. I am a walker still, but with other means of getting
about I do not feel so native to the earth as formerly.
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