I was talking--or rather listening--with a barber, the other day, in
the sleepy old town of Rivermouth. He told me, in one of those easy
confidences which seem to make the razor run more smoothly, that it
had been the custom of his family, for some twenty years past, to
forsake their commodious dwelling on Anchor Street every summer, and
emigrate six miles, in a wagon to Wallis Sands, where they spent the
month of August very merrily under canvas. Here was a sensible
household for you! They did not feel bound to waste a year's income
on a four weeks' holiday. They were not of those foolish folk who
run across the sea, carefully carrying with them the same tiresome
mind that worried them at home. They got a change of air by making
an alteration of life. They escaped from the land of Egypt by
stepping out into the wilderness and going a-fishing.
The people who always live in houses, and sleep on beds, and walk on
pavements, and buy their food from butchers and bakers and grocers,
are not the most blessed inhabitants of this wide and various earth.
The circumstances of their existence are too mathematical and secure
for perfect contentment. They live at second or third hand. They
are boarders in the world. Everything is done for them by somebody
else.
It is almost impossible for anything very interesting to happen to
them.
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