THE TOW PATH

A childish pleasure in producing small mechanical effects unaided must have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird your shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on the even path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames—­the side of meadows.

The elastic resistance of the line is a “heart-animating strain,” only too slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of the riverside plants, with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, are swept aside like a long green breaker of flourishing green.  The line drums lightly in the ears when the bushes are high and it grows taut; it makes a telephone for the rush of flowers under the stress of your easy power.

The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the joys of “feeling hearts” according to the erroneous sentiment of a verse of Moore’s.  The joys of sensitive hearts are many; but the joys of sensitive hands are few.  Here, however, in the effectual act of towing, is the ample revenge of the unmuscular upon the happy labourers with the oar, the pole, the bicycle, and all other means of violence.  Here, on the long tow-path, between warm, embrowned meadows and opal waters, you need but to walk in your swinging harness, and so take your friends up-stream.

You work merely as the mill-stream works—­by simple movement.  At lock after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to the wheel that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river have the same mere force of progress.

There never was any kinder incentive of companionship.  It is the bright Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing by so many curves of low shore on the level of the world.

Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as the wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings the lighted clouds or the blue to face your eyes.  The birds, flying high for mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own weight.  You will not envy them for so brief a success.  Did not Wordsworth want a “little boat” for the air?  Did not Byron call him a blockhead therefor?  Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of towing.

All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry.  Even the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than you, walking your effectual walk with the line attached to your willing steps.  Your moderate strength of a mere everyday physical education gives you the sufficient mastery of the towpath.

If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give it life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the buoyant burden—­the yielding check—­than ever before.  An unharnessed walk must begin to seem to you a sorry incident of insignificant liberty.  It is easier than towing?  So is the drawing of water in a sieve easier to the arms than drawing in a bucket, but not to the heart.