Some few seem to be born without much innate tendency to crime.  After all, it is mostly a matter of heredity; these unfortunates are less culpable than their neglectful ancestors; and it is a fault that none need really blush for in the present.  For such as they there still remains the example of the turnpike-loving clerk, with all its golden possibilities.  Denied the great delight of driving a locomotive, or a fire-engine —­ whirled along in a glorious nimbus of smoke-pant, spark-shower, and hoarse warning roar —­ what bliss to the palefaced quilldriver to command a penny steamboat between London Bridge and Chelsea! to drive a four-horsed Jersey-car to Kew at sixpence a head!  Though turnpikes be things of the past, there are still tolls to be taken on many a pleasant reach of Thames.  What happiness in quiet moments to tend the lock-keeper’s flower-beds —­ perhaps make love to his daughter; anon in busier times to let the old gates swing, work the groaning winches, and hear the water lap and suck and gurgle as it slowly sinks or rises with its swaying freight; to dangle legs over the side and greet old acquaintances here and there among the parti-coloured wayfarers passing up or down; while tobacco palleth not on the longest day, and beer is ever within easy reach.  The iron tetter that scurfs the face of our island has killed out the pleasant life of the road; but many of its best conditions still linger round these old toll gates, free from dust and clatter, on the silent liquid Highway to the West.

These for the weaker brethren:  but for him who is conscious of the Gift, the path is plain.

Deus Terminus

The practical Roman, stern constructor of roads and codes, when he needs must worship, loved a deity practical as himself; and in his parcelling of the known world into plots, saying unto this man, Bide here, and to that, Sit you down there, he could scarce fail to evolve the god Terminus:  visible witness of possession and dominion, type of solid facts not to be quibbled away.  We Romans of this latter day —­ so hailed by others, or complacently christened by ourselves —­ are Roman in nothing more than in this; and, as much in the less tangible realms of thought as in our solid acres, we are fain to set up the statue which shall proclaim that so much country is explored, marked out, allotted, and done with; that such and such ramblings and excursions are practicable and permissible, and all else is exploded, illegal, or absurd.  And in this way we are left with naught but a vague lingering tradition of the happier days before the advent of the ruthless deity.