The mansion of my soul has been housing phantoms all the night.  They may not stay after sunrise; they look out of my face with bleared eyes.  It is they who gibber and chatter thus at dawn, leaving me with no more self-assurance than a man on ticket-of-leave.

But as the sun comes up, behold the spirits evaporate, the films pass away from my eyes, and I am lighter, blither, happier, stronger.  Then in my heart birds begin to sing in chorus.  I am myself once more.

A fire, a kettle, and while the kettle boils, into the sea, giving my limbs to the sparkling, buoyant water.  Then am I super-self, if such an expression may be permitted.  So passes the vagabond’s night.

Thus somehow one comes into new harmony with Nature, and the personal rhythm enters into connection with all things that sleep and wake under the stars.  One lives a new life.  It is something like the change from bachelor to married life.  You are richer and stronger.  When you move some one else moves with you, and that was unexpected.  Whilst you live Nature lives with you.

I have written of the night, for the night hallows the day, and the day does not hallow the night except for those who toil.

III

THE LORD’S PRAYER

The Lord’s Prayer is a very intimate whispering of the soul with God.  It is also the perfect child’s prayer, and the tramp being much of a child, it is his.

Many people have their private interpretations of the prayer, and I have heard preachers examine it clause by clause.  It can mean many things.  It must mean different things to people of different lives.  It is something very precious to the tramp.

The tramp is the lonely one:  walking along all by himself all day by the side of the sounding waves he is desolated by loneliness, and when he lies down at dusk all alone he feels the need of loving human friends.  But his friends are far away.  He becomes once more a little trusting child, one who, though he fears, looks up to the face of a great strong Father.  He feels himself encompassed about by dangers:  perhaps some one watched him as he smoothed out his bracken bed; or if he went into a cave a robber saw him and will come later in the night, when he is fast asleep, murder him, and throw his body into the sea; or he may have made his bed in the path of the bear or in the haunt of snakes.  Many, many are the shapes of terror that assail the mind of the wanderer.  How good to be a little boy who can trust in a great strong Father to “deliver him from evil”!

And each clause of that lovely prayer has its special reality.  Thus “Give us this day our daily bread” causes him to think, not so much of getting wages on the morrow as of the kindly fruits of the earth that lie in the trees and bushes like anonymous gifts, and of the hospitality of man.