I Begin My Little Pilgrimage In The Most Enviable Of All Humours:
That In Which A Person, With A Sufficiency Of Money And A Knapsack,
Turns His Back On A Town And Walks Forward Into A Country Of Which
He Knows Only By The Vague Report Of Others.
Such an one has not
surrendered his will and contracted for the next hundred miles,
like a man on a railway.
He may change his mind at every finger-
post, and, where ways meet, follow vague preferences freely and go
the low road or the high, choose the shadow or the sun-shine,
suffer himself to be tempted by the lane that turns immediately
into the woods, or the broad road that lies open before him into
the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some city, or a
range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low
horizon. In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy,
without a pang of reproving conscience, or the least jostle to his
self-respect. It is true, however, that most men do not possess
the faculty of free action, the priceless gift of being able to
live for the moment only; and as they begin to go forward on their
journey, they will find that they have made for themselves new
fetters. Slight projects they may have entertained for a moment,
half in jest, become iron laws to them, they know not why. They
will be led by the nose by these vague reports of which I spoke
above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned one village
and not another will compel their footsteps with inexplicable
power.
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