'Excuse me while I run upstairs to get a pair of mittens?'
'Finish your soup first, dear; it will be quite cold if you leave it.'
The adherents of the new doctrine are very conscientious and faithful, as was only to be expected. We are a valiant race in the matter of our enthusiasms and can be trusted to follow them sturdily, buckling on armor or overcoats or whatever other special equipment the occasion demands. Conscientiousness is a good trait, but there is perhaps more of the joy of life in some other qualities.
Sleeping outdoors was the next great phase in the open-air movement. That also began casually enough and altogether charmingly. One lingered in the hammock, watching the stars, musing in the still summer night, until, lo! there was the dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A wonderful experience. Not much sleeping about it truly,--there is commonly not much sleeping about great experiences,--but so beautiful that the heart said, 'Go to! why not have this always? Why not sleep outdoors every night?' Which is of course exactly the way in which human nature works; very reasonable, very sane and convincing, but unfortunately never quite so successful as it should be. That which has blessed us once must be secured in perpetuity for our souls to feast on continually; revelation must fold its wings and abide with us. So we soberly go to work and strip all the poetry of divine chance, all the delight of the unexpected, from our great occasions by laying plans for their systematic recurrence.
He who bends to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses a joy as it flies, Lives in eternity's sunrise.
It is a pity that William Blake could not teach us that once for all. As a matter of fact, of course, great occasions care nothing at all for our urging; and a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. The stars and the dawn do not condescend to such paraphernalia for waylaying them as sleeping-bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito netting, with a stout club close at hand in case of tramps or a skunk.
One experience of my own recurs to my memory poignantly here, and I think I cannot do better than set it forth. I had passed an unforgettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by the evening almost insensibly into 'solemn midnight's tingling silences,' and thence into the austere dawn. It was an episode such as should have sealed my lips forever; but I profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion of interest spread through the little village.