Produced by Paul Murray, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Illustration: NIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA] A TRAMP'S SKETCHES BY STEPHEN GRAHAM 1913 TO "THE CELESTIALS" PREFACE This book was written chiefly whilst tramping along the Caucasian and Crimean shores of the Black Sea, and on a pilgrimage with Russian peasants to Jerusalem. Most of it was written in the open air, sitting on logs in the pine forests or on bridges over mountain streams, by the side of my morning fire or on the sea sand after the morning dip. It is not so much a book about Russia as about the tramp. It is the life of the wanderer and seeker, the walking hermit, the rebel against modern conditions and commercialism who has gone out into the wilderness. I have tramped alone over the battlefields of the Crimea, visited the cemetery where lie so many British dead, wandered along the Black Sea shores a thousand miles to New Athos monastery and Batum, have been with seven thousand peasant pilgrims to Jerusalem, and lived their life in the hospitable Greek monasteries and in the great Russian hostelry at the Holy City, have bathed with them in Jordan where all were dressed in their death-shrouds, and have slept with them a whole night in the Sepulchre. One cannot make such a journey without great experiences both spiritual and material. On every hand new significances are revealed, both of Russian life and of life itself. It is with life itself that this volume is concerned. It is personal and friendly, and on that account craves indulgence. Here are the songs and sighs of the wanderer, many lyrical pages, and the very minimum of scientific and topographical matter. It is all written spontaneously and without study, and as such goes forth--all that a seeker could put down of his visions, or could tell of what he sought. There will follow, if it is given to the author both to write and to publish, a full story of the places he visited along the Black Sea shore, and of the life of the pilgrims on the way to the shrine of the Sepulchre and at the shrine itself. It will be a continuation of the work begun in _Undiscovered Russia_. Several of these sketches appeared in the _St. James's Gazette_, two in _Country Life_, and one in _Collier's_ of New York, being sent out to these papers from the places where they were written. The author thanks the Editors for permission to republish, and for their courtesy in dealing with MSS. STEPHEN GRAHAM. CONTENTS I 1. FAREWELL TO THE TOWN 2. NIGHTS OUT ON A PERFECT VAGABONDAGE 3. THE LORD'S PRAYER 4. DAYS 5. THE QUESTION OK THE SCEPTIC 6. A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER 7. A STILL-CREATION-DAY 8. SUNSET FROM THE GATE OF BAIDARI 9. THE MEANING OF THE SEA II 1. HOSPITALITY 2. THE RICH MAN AND THE POOR MAN 3. A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT 4. SOCRATES OF ZUGDIDA 5. "HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?" 6. ST. SPIRIDON OF TREMIFOND 7. AT A FAIR. 8. A TURKISH COFFEE-HOUSE 9. AT A GREAT MONASTERY III 1. THE BOY WHO NEVER GROWS OLD 2. ZENOBIA 3. THE LITTLE DEAD CHILD 4. HOW THE OLD PILGRIM REACHED BETHLEHEM IV THE WANDERER'S STORY (I.) MY COMPANION. (II.) HOW HE FOUND HIMSELF IN A COACH. (III.) IRRECONCILABLES. (IV.) THE TOWNSMAN. (V.) HIS CONVERSION. V THE UNCONQUERABLE HOPE VI THE PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM VII THE MESSAGE FROM THE HERMIT * * * * * FRONTISPIECE NIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA I I FAREWELL TO THE TOWN The town is one large house of which all the little houses are rooms. The streets are the stairs. Those who live always in the town are never out of doors even if they do take the air in the streets. When I came into the town I found that in my soul were reflected its blank walls, its interminable stairways, and the shadows of hurrying traffic. A thousand sights and impressions, unbidden, unwelcome, flooded through the eye-gate of my soul, and a thousand harsh sounds and noises came to me through my ears and echoed within me. I became aware of confused influences of all kinds striving to find some habitation in the temple of my being. What had been my delight in the country, my receptivity and hospitality of consciousness, became in the town my misery and my despair. For imagine! Within my own calm mirror a beautiful world had seen itself rebuilded. Mountains and valleys lay within me, robed in sunny and cloudy days or marching in the majesty of storm. I had inbreathed their mystery and outbreathed it again as my own. I had gazed at the wide foaming seas till they had gazed into me, and all their waves waved their proud crests within me. Beauteous plains had tempted, mysterious dark forests lured me, and I had loved them and given them habitation in my being. My soul had been wedded to the great strong sun and it had slumbered under the watchful stars. The silence of vast lonely places was preserved in my breast. Or against the background of that silence resounded in my being the roar of the billows of the ocean. Great winds roared about my mountains, or the whispering snow hurried over them as over tents. In my valleys I heard the sound of rivulets; in my forests the birds. Choirs of birds sang within my breast. I had been a playfellow with God. God had played with me as with a child. Bound by so intimate a tie, how terrible to have been betrayed to a town! For now, fain would the evil city reflect itself in my calm soul, its commerce take up a place within the temple of my being. I had left God's handiwork and come to the man-made town. I had left the inexplicable and come to the realm of the explained. In the holy temple were arcades of shops; through its precincts hurried the trams; the pictures of trade were displayed; men were building hoardings in my soul and posting notices of idol-worship, and hurrying throngs were reading books of the rites of idolatry. Instead of the mighty anthem of the ocean I heard the roar of traffic. Where had been mysterious forests now stood dark chimneys, and the songs of birds were exchanged for the shrill whistle of trains. And my being began to express itself to itself in terms of commerce. "Oh God," I cried in my sorrow, "who did play with me among the mountains, refurnish my soul! Purge Thy Temple as Thou didst in Jerusalem of old time, when Thou didst overset the tables of the money-changers." Then the spirit drove me into the wilderness to my mountains and valleys, by the side of the great sea and by the haunted forests. Once more the vast dome of heaven became the roof of my house, and within the house was rebuilded that which my soul called beautiful. There I refound my God, and my being re-expressed itself to itself in terms of eternal Mysteries. I vowed I should never again belong to the town. As upon a spring day the face of heaven is hid and a storm descends, winds ruffle the bosom of a pure lake, the flowers droop, wet, the birds cease singing, and rain rushes over all, and then anon the face of heaven clears, the sun shines forth, the flowers look up in tears, the birds sing again, and the pure lake reflects once more the pure depth of the sky, so now my glad soul, which had lost its sun, found it again and remembered its birds and its flowers. II NIGHTS OUT ON A PERFECT VAGABONDAGE I I have been a whole season in the wilds, tramping or idling on the Black Sea shore, living for whole days together on wild fruit, sleeping for the most part under the stars, bathing every morning and evening in the clear warm sea. It is difficult to tell the riches of the life I have had, the significance of the experience. I have felt pulse in my veins wild blood which my instincts had forgotten in the town. I have felt myself come back to Nature. During the first month after my departure from the town I slept but thrice under man's roof. I slept all alone, on the hillside, in the maize-fields, in the forest, in old deserted houses, in caves, ruins, like a wild animal gone far afield in search of prey. I never knew in advance where I should make my night couch; for I was Nature's guest and my hostess kept her little secrets. Each night a new secret was opened, and in the secret lay some pleasant mystery. Some of the mysteries I guessed--there are many guesses in these pages--some I only tried to guess, and others I could only wonder over. All manner of mysterious things happen to us in sleep; the sick man is made well, the desperate hopeful, the dull man happy. These things happen in houses which are barred and shuttered and bolted. The power of the Night penetrates even into the luxurious apartments of kings, even into the cellars of the slums. But if it is potent in these, how much more is it potent in its free unrestricted domain, the open country. He who sleeps under the stars is bathed in the elemental forces which in houses only creep to us through keyholes. I may say from experience that he who has slept out of doors every day for a month, nay even for a week, is at the end of that time a new man. He has entered into new relationship with the world in which he lives, and has allowed the gentle creative hands of Nature to re-shape his soul. The first of my nights after leaving the town was spent on a shaggy grass patch on a cliff, under three old twisted yew trees. Underfoot was an abundance of wild lavender and the air was laden with the scent. I am now at New Athos monastery, ten miles from Sukhum, and am writing this in the cell that the hospitable monks have given me. My last night was in a deep cavern at the base of a high rock on a desert shore. The first night was warm and gentle, though it was followed by several that were stormy. Wrapped in my rug I felt not a shiver of cold, even at dawn. As I lay at my ease, I looked out over the far southern sea sinking to sleep in the dusk. The glistening and sparkling of the water passed away--the sea became a great bale of grey--blue silk, soft, smooth, dreamy, like the garment of a sorceress queen. I slipped into sleep and slipped out again as easily as one goes from one room to another, sometimes sleeping one hour or half an hour at a time, or more often one moment asleep, one moment awake, like the movement of a boat on the waves. Once when I wakened, I started at an unforeseen phenomenon. The moon in her youth was riding over the sea as bright as it is possible to be, and down below her she wrote upon the waves and expressed herself in new variety, a long splash of lemon-coloured light over the placid ocean, a dream picture, something of magic. It was a marvellous sight, something of that which is indicated in pictures, but which one cannot recognise as belonging to the world of truth--something impressionistic. To waken to see something so beautiful is to waken for the first time, it is verily to be in part born; for therein the soul becomes aware of something it had not previously imagined: looking into the mirror of Nature, it sees itself anew. Where my sleeping-place would be had been a secret, and this was the mystery in it, the further secret. I was definitely aware even on my first night out that I had entered a new world. To sleep, to wake and find the moon still dreaming, to see the moon's dream in the water, to sleep again and wake, so--till the dawn. Such was my night under the old yews, the first spent with these southern stars on a long vagabondage. II How different was last night, how full of weariness after heavy tramping through leagues of loose stones. I had been tramping from desolate Cape Pitsoonda over miles and miles of sea holly and scrub through a district where were no people. I had been living on crab-apples and sugar the whole day, for I could get no provisions. It is a comic diet. I should have liked to climb up inland to find a resting-place and seek out houses, but I was committed to the seashore, for the cliffs were sheer, and where the rivers made what might have been a passage, the forest tangles were so barbed that they would tear the clothes off one's back. In many places the sea washed the cliffs and I had to undress in order to get past. It was with resignation that I gave up my day's tramping and sought refuge for the night in a deep and shapely cavern. There was plenty of dry clean sand on the floor, and there was a natural rock pillow. I spread out my blanket and lay at length, looking out to the sea. I lay so near the waves that at high tide I could have touched the foam with my staff. I watched the sun go down and felt pleased that I had given up my quest of houses and food until the morrow. As I lay so leisurely watching the sun, it occurred to me that there was no reason why man should not give up quests when he wanted to--he was not fixed in a definite course like the sun. Sunset was beautiful, and dark-winged gulls continually alighted on the glowing waves, alighted and swam and flew again till the night. Then the moon lightened up the sea with silver, and all night long the waves rolled and rolled again, and broke and splashed and lapped. The deep cavern was filled with singing sounds that at first frightened me, but at last lulled me to sleep as if a nurse had sung them. III Between these two beds what a glorious Night picture-book, a book telling almost entirely of the doings of the moon. I remember how I slept once under a wild walnut-tree. In front of me rose to heaven forested hills, and the night clothed them in majesty. Presently the moon came gently from her apartments and put out a slender hand, grasped the tree-tops, and pulled herself up over the world. She showed herself to me in all her glory, and then in a minute was gone again; for she entered into a many-windowed cloud castle and roamed from room to room. As she passed from window to window I knew by the light where she was. A calm night. The moon went right across the sky and returned to her home. Rain came before the dawn, and then mists crept down over the forests and hid them from my view. Cold, cold! The mountains were hidden by a cloud. Loose stones rolled down a cliff continually and a wind sighed. I snuggled myself into my blanket and waited for an hour. Then the sun gained possession of the sky. I went down to the river, gathered sticks--they were very damp--and made a fire. Once the fire began to burn it soon increased in size, for I had gathered a great pile of little twigs and they soon dried and burned. Then in their burning they dried bigger twigs, sticks, cudgels, logs. I boiled my kettle and made tea. Whilst I bathed in the river the sun gave a vision of his splendour: a thousand mists trembled at his gaze. An hour later it was a very hot day, and the village folk coming out of their houses could scarcely have dreamed how reluctantly the night had retired at the dawn--with what cold and damp the morning had begun. IV Another night, just after moonrise, a wind arose and drove in front of it the whole night long a great thunderstorm, with lightnings and rollings and grumblings and mutterings, but never a spot of rain. At dawn, when I looked out to sea, I saw the whole dreadful array of the storm standing to leeward like ships that had passed in the night, and as though baulked in pursuit the roll of the thunder came across the sky sullenly, though with a note of defeat. The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me to make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a little settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs outside the village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up in all the clothes I possessed, and so saved myself from the damp. Next morning, however, my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wring it, though I had felt warm all night. I had always to guard against the possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasant proximity to some place of shelter--a bridge, a cave, or a house; and more than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the night, and take up the alternative one in shelter. V A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I left home. I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at the end of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, when suddenly I looked up to the sky and saw the evening turning swiftly to night before my eyes. The sun was not due to set, but the western horizon seemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it. A great black bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away the sun before his time. I hastened to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, for it was necessary to find a convenient night place. In a quarter of an hour it was night. At regular intervals all along the road were the brightly lit lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature street lights, the fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied by hedgehogs. I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep, watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; but I had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam of lightning. Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that had overtaken the sun, coming forward into the night--eclipsing the sky. A storm? Would it reach me? My wishes prompted comforting answers and I lay and stared at the sky, trying to find reassurance. I did not feel inclined to stir, but the clouds came on ominously. I marked out a bourne across the wide sky and resolved that if the shadow crept past certain bright planets in the north, south, and centre, I would take it as a sign, repack my wraps, and seek shelter in a farm-house. But the clouds came on and on. Slowly but surely the great army advanced and the lightnings became more frequent. My sky-line was passed. I rose sorrowfully, put all my things in the knapsack, and took the road once again. The lightning rushed past on the road and, blazing over the forests, lit up the wide night all around. Overhead the sky was cut across: in the east was a perfectly clear sky except at the horizon where the moon seemed to have left behind fiery vapours; in the west and overhead lay the dense black mass of the storm cloud. The clouds came forward in regular array like an army. Nothing could hold them back; they came on--appallingly. And the moon looked at the steady advance and her light gleamed upon the front ranks as if she were lighting them with many lanterns. I had lain down to sleep quite sober-hearted, but now as the lightnings played around I began to feel as excited as if I were in a theatre--my blood burned. I had tired feet, but I forgot them. I walked swiftly. I felt ready to run, to dance. Very strangely there was at the same time a presentiment that I might be struck by lightning. But all Nature was madly excited with me and also shared my presentiment of destruction. We lived together like the victim and the accomplices in a Dionysian sacrifice and orgy. And the clouds kept on gaining! Far away I heard the storm wind and the clamour of the sea. The thunder moaned and sobbed. I hurried along the deserted road and asked my heart for a village, a house, a church, a cave, anything to shield from the oncoming drench. Spying a light far away on a hill, I left the road and plunged towards it. I went over many maize-fields, by narrow paths through the tall waving grain, the lightning playing like firelight among the sheath-like leaves. I crossed a wide tobacco plantation and approached the light on the hill, by a long, heavily-rutted cart-track. This led right up to the doors of a farmhouse. Big surly dogs came rushing out at me, but I clumped them off with my stick, and having much doubt in my mind as to the sort of reception I should get, I knocked at the windows and doors. I expected to be met by a man with a gun, for the dogs had made such a rumpus that any one might have been alarmed. The door was opened by a tall Russian peasant. "May I spend the night here?" I asked. The man smiled and put out his arms as if to embrace me. "Yes, of course. Why ask? Come inside," he replied. "I thought of sleeping in the open air," I added, "but the storm coming up I saw I should be drenched." "Why sleep outside when man is ready to receive you?" said the peasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked you came to me." He asked me would I sleep in the house or on the maize straw. His sons slept on the maize; it was covered, and so, sheltered from the rain. I could sleep in the house if I liked, but it was more comfortable on the straw. His three sons slept there, but as it was a festival they had not come home yet. I agreed to the straw. My host led me to a sort of large open barn, a barn without walls, a seven-feet depth of hay and straw surmounted by a high roof on poles. "If you feel cold, or if the rain comes in, just burrow down under the straw," said the peasant. "Very glad I am that you have come to me, that you have done me the honour. Much better to ask hospitality than to sleep out." I quite agreed it was much better to sleep with man on such a night. The lightnings were now all about--never leaving a second's pure darkness. The thunder grew more powerful and rolled forward from three sides. My host stood by me after I had lain down, a whole hour. He was most hilarious, having partaken plentifully of festival fare. He warned me repeatedly against sleeping on the ground, and advised me to find bark or withered branches to lie upon if I would not seek shelter with man. The increasing storm did not seem to impress him in the slightest. He was all agog to tell me his family history and to compare the state of agriculture in England with that in Russia. Only when his sons came home and the heavy rain spots had begun to shower down upon him did he finally shake my hand, wish me well, cross himself, and stump off back to the house. Three tall young men scrambled over me into the straw and buried themselves: two laughed and talked, the other was silent and frightened. There was no sleep. The thunder grew louder and louder, and the lightning rushed over our faces like the sudden glare of a searchlight. All four of us put our faces to the straw to shut out the light, and we tried to sleep. But we knew that the tempest at its worst had yet to break. Suddenly came a sharp premonitory crash just above us, near, astonishing. One of the young men, who had just dozed off, woke up and scratched his head, saying-- "The little bear has got into the maize. Eh, brothers, this is going to be a big piece of work." Then a great wind broke out of the sky and tore through the forests like armies of wild beasts. The trees within our view bent down as if they would break in two; the moon above them was overswept by the cloud. When the moon's light had gone the night became darker and the lightning brighter. The framework of our shelter rocked to and fro in the gale and we felt as if upon the sea; the straw and the hay jumped up as if alive, and great lumps of thatch were rent out of the roof, showing the sky and letting in the rain. I looked for the ruin of our shelter. But the hurricane passed on. The rain came in its place. The great forty-day flood re-accomplished itself in an hour. We heard the beat of the rain on the earth: in ten minutes it was the hiss of the rain on the flooded meadows. By the sulphurous illuminations we saw almost continuously the close-packed, drenching rain.... The wet came in. We burrowed deep down into the straw and slept like some new sort of animal. VI On other nights heavy rain came on unexpectedly, and I discovered how pleasant a bed may be made just under the framework of a bridge. The bridge is a favourite resort of the Russian tramp and pilgrim, and I have often come across their comfortable hay or bracken beds there. Indeed I seldom go across a bridge at night without thinking there may be some such as myself beneath it. When the weather is wet it is much more profitable to sleep in a village--there is hospitality there, and the peasant wife gives you hot soup and dries your clothes. But often villages are far apart, and when you are tramping through the forest there may be twenty miles without a human shelter. I remember I found empty houses, and though I used them they were most fearsome. I had more thrills in them than in the most lonely resting-places in the open. Some distance from Gagri I found an old ruined dwelling, floorless, almost roofless, but still affording shelter. I had many misgivings as I lay there. Was the house haunted? Was it some one else's shelter? Had some family lived there and all died out? You may imagine the questions that assailed me, once I had lain down. But whether evil was connected with the house or no, it was innocuous for me. Nothing happened; only the moon looked through the open doorway; winds wandered among the broken rafters, and far away owls shrieked. Again, on the way to Otchemchiri I came upon a beautiful cottage in the forest and went to ask hospitality, but found no one there. The front door was bolted but the back door was open. I walked in and took a seat. As there were red-hot embers in the fire some one had lately been there, and would no doubt come back--so I thought. But no one came: twilight grew to night in loneliness and I lay down on the long sleeping bench and slept. It was like the house of the three bears but that there was no hot porridge on the table. But no bears came; only next morning I was confronted by a half-dressed savage, a veritable Caliban by appearance but quite harmless, an idiot and deaf and dumb. I made signs to him and he went out and brought in wood, and we remade the fire together. I have slept out in many places--in England, in the Caucasus where it was amongst the most lawless people in Europe, in North Russian forests where the bear is something to be reckoned with--but I have never come to harm. The most glorious and wonderful nights I ever had were almost sleepless ones, spent looking at the stars and tasting the new sensations. Yet even in respect of rest it seems to me I have thriven better out of doors. There is a real tranquillity on a mountain side after the sun has gone down, and a silence, even though the crickets whistle and owls cry, though the wind murmurs in the trees above or the waves on the shore below. The noises in houses are often intolerable and one has to wait all every noise in the house and in the street has died away. It is marvellous how easily one recuperates in the open air. Even the cold untires and refreshes. Then, even if one lies awake, the night passes with extraordinary rapidity. It is always a marvel to me how long the day seems by comparison with the night when I sleep out of doors. A sleepless night in a house is an eternity, but it is only a brief interlude under the stars. I believe the animal creation that sleeps in the field is so in harmony with nature and so unself-conscious that night does not seem more than a quarter of an hour and a little cloudy weather. Perhaps the butterflies do not even realise that night endures; darkness comes--they sleep; darkness flees--they wake again. I think they have no dreams. VII It is peculiar, the tramp's feeling about night. When the sun goes down he begins to have an awkward feeling, a sort of shame; he wants to hide himself, to put his head somewhere out of sight. He finds his night place, and even begins to fall asleep as he arranges it. He feels heavy, dull. The thoughts that were bright and shapely by day become dark and ill-proportioned like shadows. He tosses a while, and stares at the stars. At last the stars stare at him; his eyes close; he sleeps. Three hours pass--it is always a critical time, three hours after sunset; many sleeping things stir at that time. His thoughts are bright for a moment, but then fall heavy again. He wonders at the moon, and the moon wonders. She is hunting on a dark mountain side. The next sleep is a long one, a deep one, and ghosts may pass over the sleeper, imps dance on his head, rats nibble at his provisions; he wakes not. He is under a charm--nought of evil can affect him, for he has prayed. Encompassed with dangers, the tramp always prays "Our Father," and that he may be kept for the one who loves him. Prayers are strong out of doors at night, for they are made at heaven's gate in the presence of the stars. An hour before dawn a new awakening. Oh dear, night not gone! The tramp is vexed. The moon has finished her hunting, and is going out of the night with her dark huntsmen; she passes through the gate. Peerless hunter! The sky is full of light, a sort of dull, paper-lantern light. In an hour it will be morning. The side on which I have been lying is sore. I turn over and reflect joyfully that when next I wake it will be day. Moths are flitting in the dawn twilight: yes, in an hour it will be day. Ah, ha, ha! The sleeper yawns and looks up. There is blue in the clouds, pale blue like that of a baby's eyes. A cart lumbers along the road, the first cart of the morning. I reflect that if I remain where I am people may come and look at me. Ten minutes hesitation, and then suddenly I make up my mind and rise. I feel a miserable creature, a despicable sort of person, one who has lately been beaten, a beggar who has just been refused alms. In the half-light of dawn it seems I scarcely have a right to exist. Or I feel a sort of self-pity. How often have I said as I gathered up my stiff limbs and damp belongings in the mist of the morning, "And the poor old tramp lifts himself and takes to the road once more, trudge, trudge, trudge--a weary life!" The mansion of my soul has been housing phantoms all the night. They may not stay after sunrise; they look out of my face with bleared eyes. It is they who gibber and chatter thus at dawn, leaving me with no more self-assurance than a man on ticket-of-leave. But as the sun comes up, behold the spirits evaporate, the films pass away from my eyes, and I am lighter, blither, happier, stronger. Then in my heart birds begin to sing in chorus. I am myself once more. A fire, a kettle, and while the kettle boils, into the sea, giving my limbs to the sparkling, buoyant water. Then am I super-self, if such an expression may be permitted. So passes the vagabond's night. Thus somehow one comes into new harmony with Nature, and the personal rhythm enters into connection with all things that sleep and wake under the stars. One lives a new life. It is something like the change from bachelor to married life. You are richer and stronger. When you move some one else moves with you, and that was unexpected. Whilst you live Nature lives with you. I have written of the night, for the night hallows the day, and the day does not hallow the night except for those who toil. III THE LORD'S PRAYER The Lord's Prayer is a very intimate whispering of the soul with God. It is also the perfect child's prayer, and the tramp being much of a child, it is his. Many people have their private interpretations of the prayer, and I have heard preachers examine it clause by clause. It can mean many things. It must mean different things to people of different lives. It is something very precious to the tramp. The tramp is the lonely one: walking along all by himself all day by the side of the sounding waves he is desolated by loneliness, and when he lies down at dusk all alone he feels the need of loving human friends. But his friends are far away. He becomes once more a little trusting child, one who, though he fears, looks up to the face of a great strong Father. He feels himself encompassed about by dangers: perhaps some one watched him as he smoothed out his bracken bed; or if he went into a cave a robber saw him and will come later in the night, when he is fast asleep, murder him, and throw his body into the sea; or he may have made his bed in the path of the bear or in the haunt of snakes. Many, many are the shapes of terror that assail the mind of the wanderer. How good to be a little boy who can trust in a great strong Father to "deliver him from evil"! And each clause of that lovely prayer has its special reality. Thus "Give us this day our daily bread" causes him to think, not so much of getting wages on the morrow as of the kindly fruits of the earth that lie in the trees and bushes like anonymous gifts, and of the hospitality of man. Most beautiful of all to the tramp is the wish--"Thy Kingdom come--Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven." For it is thus understood: Thy Will be done in earth--I am that earth. "Thy Kingdom come" means Thy Kingdom come in me--may my soul lie like a pure mirror before the beauty of the world, may the beauty of the world be reflected in me till the whole beautiful world is my heart. Then shall my heart be pure, and that which I see will be God. Thy Will be done in me as it is done in heaven. And the tramp asks himself as he lies full length on the earth and looks up at the stars--are you a yea-sayer? Do you say "Yes" to life? Do you raise your face in wonder to the beauty of the world? Do you stand with bare feet in sacred places? Do you remember always the mystery and wonder that is in your fellow-man whom you meet upon the road? ... "Hallowed be Thy Name." Does the wanderer love all things? It is a condition of all things loving him. He must have perfect peace in his heart for the kingdom to be built there.... "Forgive us our trespasses." We may be tempted to forget Thee, may fear danger and our hearts be ruffled, may be tempted to forget that our fellow-man is one like ourselves, with our mystery and wonder, and having a very loving human heart either apparent or prevented. We may be tempted to forget the mystery of our own souls. The tramp prays to be led not into such temptation. For, with the Father above him, is the power, the kingdom, and the glory, for ever and ever. As I said, prayers are strong out of doors, made in the presence of all the stars. One is compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses. There is calm all around and in one's own heart. The mysterious beauty of the starry sky reflects itself in the soul, and across its mirror sails the pale moon. My own body becomes a cradle in which the little Christ Child sleeps. There are angels everywhere. I am in universal keeping, for the stars are all looking and pointing to me. Because of the little Child the shepherds near by hear heavenly harmony, and journeying through the night to the land of dreams come the three wonderful old kings with gifts. IV DAYS It is because I have been tempered by the coldness of the night that I am not overwhelmed by the heat of the day. Because the night is dark and cool and sweet I see the true colours of the day, and the noon sun does not dazzle me. The tramp's eyes open and then they open again: at midday his eyes are wider than those of indoor folk. He is nearer to the birds because he has slept with them in the bush. They also are nearer to him, for the night has left her mysterious traces upon his face and garments, something which humans cannot see, not even the tramp himself, but which the wild things recognise right enough. The tramp walks. His road is one that may only be walked upon. People on wheels are never on it: at least, I never met a wheel person who had seen on either side of the road what the tramp sees--and a road is not only a path, but that which is about it. The wheel is the great enemy of Nature, whether it be the wheel of a machine or of a vehicle. Nature abhors wheels. She will not be wooed by cyclists, motorists, goggled motor-cyclists, and the rest: she is not like a modern young lady who, despite ideals, _must_ marry, and will take men as they are found in her day and generation. The woman of the woods who dresses herself in flowers, and whose voice is as birds' songs, is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow--not new-fangled. You must go to her; she will not come to you. You must live as she does. Therefore the tramp moves _naturally_, on his feet. He comes into step. And sleeping out of doors, living in the sun, eating forest berries, washing in the stream or in the sea, all these are part of a coming into step. How this _coming back_ develops the temperament! I left the town timid, almost a townsman, expecting not only the dangers that were but also all those that were not. I half believed all the tales by which stay-at-home people tried to warn or frighten me. Though taking the road with every aspect of carelessness and boldness, I confessed to my heart that I was a coward. Then came my first week's tramping, and I emerged a different man. I felt bold. A few days later still I nursed a stick in my hand, saying, "If a robber comes, let him come! We'll have a struggle." Leaving the town I scanned the faces of the passers-by apprehensively, and said "Good-morning" or "Good-evening" very meekly to all dangerous-looking persons, but a fortnight later I was even strutting on the road with a smile almost malicious on my lips. I felt myself growing wilder. The truth broke upon me in an introspective moment one morning as I was nearing Sotchi. I felt I had changed. I stopped to take stock of my new life and ways. I had been living in the forest and on the seashore, away from mankind, on Nature's gifts. All my days from dawn to sunset I hunted for food. My life was food-hunting. I certainly wrote not a line and thought less. In my mind formed only such elementary ideas as "Soon more grapes," "These berries are not the best," "More walnuts," "Oh, a spring; I must drink there." Something from the ancient past was awakened. I saw a bunch of wild grapes, my heart leapt, and without a thought I jumped to it and took it. Or I saw a fresh trickling stream pouring over the ledges of the rocks, and I rushed and pressed my lips to the bubbling water. There was no intermediary between Nature's gifts and the man who needed them. Wish was translated into act without the aid of thought. One day I was lost in the forest among the giant tangles and I was not at all anxious to find the way out again. Perhaps I might have lived there all the Autumn, and only when the berries and nuts were exhausted and the cold winter winds sought me out should I come skulking back to the haunts of men like some wild animal made tame by Winter. I was aware, therefore, of a new experience, a modification in personality, a change of rhythm. I was walking with Nature, marching with her, with all her captains the great trees and her infantry the little bushes, and I caught in my ears her marching music. I was thrilled by the common chord that makes crowds act as one man, that in this case made my heart beat in unison with all the wild things. I may as well say at once I love them all and am ready to live with them and for them. V THE QUESTION OF THE SCEPTIC "That's all very well, but don't you often get bored?" asked a sceptic. "I enjoy a weekend in the country, or a good Sunday tramp in Richmond Park or Epping Forest. I take my month on the Yorkshire moors with pleasure, or I spend a season in Switzerland or Spain, and I don't mind sleeping under a bush and eating whatever I can get in shepherds' cottages. I can well appreciate the simple life and the country life, but I'm perfectly sure I should pine away if I had to live it always. I couldn't stand it. I'd rather be debarred from the country altogether than not go back to town. The town is much more indispensable to me. I feel the country life is very good in so far as it makes one stronger and fitter to work in town again, but as an end in itself it would be intolerable." This was a question I needed to answer not only to the sceptic but to myself. It is true the wanderer often feels bored, even in beautiful places. I am bored some days every year, no matter where I spend them, and I shall always be. I get tired of this world and want another. That is a common feeling, if not often analysed. There is, however, another boredom, that of the weariness of the body, or its satiety of country air; the longing for the pleasures of the town, the tides of the soul attracted by the moon of habit. The tramp also confesses to that boredom. But when he gets back to the town to enjoy it for a while he swiftly finds it much more boring than the country. If every one went to the country and lived the simple life when he was inclined, the size of European towns would be diminished to very small proportions. The evil of a town is that it establishes a tyranny and keeps its people against the people's true desires. I said to my sceptical friend: "Those who praise the simple life and those who scoff at it are both very extravagant as a rule. Let the matter be stated temperately. The tramp does not want a world of tramps--that would never do. The tramps--better call them the rebels against modern life--are perhaps only the first searchers for new life. They know themselves as necessarily only a few, the pioneers. Let the townsman give the simple life its place. Every one will benefit by a little more simplicity, and a little more living in communion with Nature, a little more of the country. I say, 'Come to Nature altogether,' but I am necessarily misunderstood by those who feel quickly bored. Good advice for all people is this--live the simple life as much as you can _till you're bored_. Some people are soon bored: others never are. Whoever has known Nature once and loved her will return again to her. Love to her becomes more and more." But whoever has resolved the common illusions of the meaning of life, and has seen even in glimpses the naked mystery of our being, finds that he absolutely must live in the world which is outside city walls. He wants to explore this desert island in space, and with it to explore the unending significance of his deathless spirit. VI A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER Rostof on the Don is always beautiful when one leaves it to go south. Nothing can efface from my mind the picture of it as I saw it when first going to the Caucasus. The sunset illumined it with the hues of romance. All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if lit up from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellows became burning living colours. The town lay spread out upon the high banks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church. The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight and the crosses above them were changed into pure fire. Round about the town stretched the grey-green steppe, freshened by the river-side, but burned down to the suffering earth itself on the horizon. Then over all, like God's mercy harmonising man's sins, the effulgence of a light-blue southern sky. By that scene I have understood the poet's thought-- To draw one beauty into the heart's core And keep it changeless. * * * * * Yet how transient is the appearance of beauty. It has an eternity not in itself but in the heart. Thus I look out at the ever-changing ocean and suddenly, involuntarily ejaculate, "How beautiful!" yet before
{'title': "A Tramp's Sketches by Stephen Graham", 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}