After passing a night like this you are glad to pick up
the wretched remains of your body long, long before morning dawns.
Your skin is scorched, your temples throb, your lips feel withered
and dried, your burning eyeballs are screwed inwards against the
brain. You have no hope but only in the saddle and the freshness
of the morning air.
CHAPTER XII--MY FIRST BIVOUAC
The course of the Jordan is from the north to the south, and in
that direction, with very little of devious winding, it carries the
shining waters of Galilee straight down into the solitudes of the
Dead Sea. Speaking roughly, the river in that meridian is a
boundary between the people living under roofs and the tented
tribes that wander on the farther side. And so, as I went down in
my way from Tiberias towards Jerusalem, along the western bank of
the stream, my thinking all propended to the ancient world of
herdsmen and warriors that lay so close over my bridle arm.
If a man, and an Englishman, be not born of his mother with a
natural Chiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for
loathing the wearisome ways of society; a time for not liking tamed
people; a time for not dancing quadrilles, not sitting in pews; a
time for pretending that Milton and Shelley, and all sorts of mere
dead people, were greater in death than the first living Lord of
the Treasury; a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for
speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished
institutions.
Pages:
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157