I was aware, therefore, of a new experience, a modification in personality, a change of rhythm.  I was walking with Nature, marching with her, with all her captains the great trees and her infantry the little bushes, and I caught in my ears her marching music.  I was thrilled by the common chord that makes crowds act as one man, that in this case made my heart beat in unison with all the wild things.  I may as well say at once I love them all and am ready to live with them and for them.

V

THE QUESTION OF THE SCEPTIC

“That’s all very well, but don’t you often get bored?” asked a sceptic.  “I enjoy a weekend in the country, or a good Sunday tramp in Richmond Park or Epping Forest.  I take my month on the Yorkshire moors with pleasure, or I spend a season in Switzerland or Spain, and I don’t mind sleeping under a bush and eating whatever I can get in shepherds’ cottages.  I can well appreciate the simple life and the country life, but I’m perfectly sure I should pine away if I had to live it always.  I couldn’t stand it.  I’d rather be debarred from the country altogether than not go back to town.  The town is much more indispensable to me.  I feel the country life is very good in so far as it makes one stronger and fitter to work in town again, but as an end in itself it would be intolerable.”

This was a question I needed to answer not only to the sceptic but to myself.  It is true the wanderer often feels bored, even in beautiful places.  I am bored some days every year, no matter where I spend them, and I shall always be.  I get tired of this world and want another.  That is a common feeling, if not often analysed.

There is, however, another boredom, that of the weariness of the body, or its satiety of country air; the longing for the pleasures of the town, the tides of the soul attracted by the moon of habit.  The tramp also confesses to that boredom.  But when he gets back to the town to enjoy it for a while he swiftly finds it much more boring than the country.

If every one went to the country and lived the simple life when he was inclined, the size of European towns would be diminished to very small proportions.  The evil of a town is that it establishes a tyranny and keeps its people against the people’s true desires.

I said to my sceptical friend:  “Those who praise the simple life and those who scoff at it are both very extravagant as a rule.  Let the matter be stated temperately.  The tramp does not want a world of tramps—­that would never do.  The tramps—­better call them the rebels against modern life—­are perhaps only the first searchers for new life.  They know themselves as necessarily only a few, the pioneers.  Let the townsman give the simple life its place.  Every one will benefit by a little more simplicity, and a little more living in communion with Nature, a little more of the country.  I say, ’Come to Nature altogether,’ but I am necessarily misunderstood by those who feel quickly bored.  Good advice for all people is this—­live the simple life as much as you can till you’re bored.  Some people are soon bored:  others never are.  Whoever has known Nature once and loved her will return again to her.  Love to her becomes more and more.”