A rolling-stone sees life, of course, but collects little, if any, fruit; though I made no determined efforts to escape my conditions at this time, a new adventure ever had attractions for me. Having once tasted the essence of a particular experience, I found myself weary of it and longing for a new one. This vagabondage in the blood has strengthened with the years. A fixed job means prison, a new one sends my spirits up. Routine is hell. To take a room, a flat, a job by the year, means insupportable detestation of any of them soon afterwards. It is a view of life that hardly goes to make good citizenship, but, on the other hand, it tends to keep the heart young, to prevent too early hardening of the mental arteries, while it certainly militates against the dread disease of boredom. _Une vie mouvementée_ has its vagabond values. To a certain side of my nature Old Louis’s wiser epitaph (“Sorry _I_ spoke; sorry _they_ spoke”) made less appeal than some anonymous verses I came across in _Scribner’s Magazine_ with the title “A Vagrant’s Epitaph”--verses I knew by heart after a first reading: Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor. Love could not hold him; Duty forged no chain. The wide seas and the mountains called him, And grey dawns saw his camp-fires in the rain. Sweet hands might tremble!--aye, but he must go. Revel might hold him for a little space; But, turning past the laughter and the lamps, His eyes must ever catch the luring Face. Dear eyes might question! Yea, and melt again; Rare lips a-quiver, silently implore; But he must ever turn his furtive head, And hear that other summons at the door. Change was his mistress; Chance his counsellor. The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail. Why tarries he to-day?... And yesternight Adventure lit her stars without avail.