I made my midday halt at a lonely, elevated spot, with not a building or any other sign of man's handiwork in sight, excepting the long and winding road and the rugged stone walls that bounded and followed it in curving parallels, up hill and down dale for many a mile, till lost to vision in the haze of space. There on a soft grassy margin of the road, with the wall as shelter from the wayward wind that always seems to blow over the Cotswolds, I spread my rug, reclined at ease, and, free from care as a man can be, enjoyed my alfresco meal and contemplative pipe to follow, feeling in the best of humours with all the world and myself, envying none. I heard no sound but that of the wind gently surring among the tall grasses, and softly murmuring through the many crevices of that loose and broken wall. My eyes saw nothing but the sunlit and rolling land stretching far around, and the silent, spacious sky above. I was impressed with the sense of solitude and the peace of the spot. It is good for man to be alone at times with the wide earth and sky; it teaches him how small a thing he really is, for nature shows man neither respect nor attention; she treats the tramp and the lord the same. Even on the wild Canadian prairies, before the coming of the colonist, one could hardly find a solitude more apparently profound than mine that day, for the eye cannot see farther than the uttermost horizon; beyond might be the end of the world. Just to live in the present, content with the present, that was my mood of the moment, neither looking backwards nor forwards, being simply thankful to be alive without any pain of body--that is the true holiday spirit, that is the wine of life; then pure laziness is a virtue, for if a man would enjoy his holiday lazing, laze he should. The gospel of exertion has been preached overmuch. It was a fair spot I had found, and the world is very fair in fair places; and does not Ben Jonson say, "How near to good is what is fair!" Long I rested there, so long that the shadow thrown by the wall changed round like that of a dial, but the matter of time troubled me not, for my hours were not marked by the clock. I wished my mind to be fallow. Emerson says, "The hardest thing in the world is--to think." I cannot follow him, for I find it impossible not to do so. I would be At vacancy with Nature, Acceptive and at ease, Distilling the present hour Whatever, wherever it is, And over the past, oblivion. When I tired of my solitude there was my car, ready at a moment's notice to whisk me back to the haunts of man. "Solitude hath its charms," but, to me, only when I know I can get away from it after having had my fill. One travels to escape for a while from man and town, from streets and houses, and then in turn one longs to get back again to despised humanity and neighbourship--at least I do, being no moody philosopher but a lover of my kind.