It was this book of Insall’s, “The Travels of Silas Simpkins”, rather than his “Epworth Green” or “The Hermit of Blue Mountain,” that Mrs. Maturin chose to read to Janet.  Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom he was more gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas Simpkins chose a cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from the sea to the mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent lakes on the Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again.  Two chunky grey horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled him at the rate of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had learned the lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be bolted.  Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the stone walls:  usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied psychology.  At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty.  Silos was in a way a sage—­but such a human sage!  He never intruded with theories, he never even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought or despised his goods, or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he may have had his ideas on the subject:  it is certain that presently one began to have one’s own:  nor did he exclaim with George Sand, “Il n’y a rien de plus betement mechant que l’habitant des petites villes!” Somehow the meannesses and jealousies were accounted for, if not excused.  To understand is to pardon.

It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself as one thought it over before falling off to sleep!  New England in the early summer!  Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was the sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool salt breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents of roadside flowers.  Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail.

Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty and colour, life in the once prosperous houses not yet abandoned....  Presently, the hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset, and the horses’ feet are on the “Boston Road”—­or rud, according to the authorized pronunciation of that land.  Hardly, indeed, in many places, a “rud” to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with upcountry produce to the sea.  They were not a people who sought the easiest way, and the Boston Road reflects their characters:  few valleys are deep enough to turn it aside; few