ON PILLAR ROCK
Those, we are told, who have heard the East a-calling “never heed naught else.” Perhaps it is so; but they can never have heard the call of Lakeland at New Year. They can never have scrambled up the screes of the Great Gable on winter days to try a fall with the Arrow Head and the Needle, the Chimney and Kern Knotts Crack; never have seen the mighty Pillar Rock beckoning them from the top of Black Sail Pass, nor the inn lights far down in the valley calling them back from the mountains when night has fallen; never have sat round the inn fire and talked of the jolly perils of the day, or played chess with the landlord—and been beaten—or gone to bed with the refrain of the climbers' chorus still challenging the roar of the wind outside—
Come, let us tie the rope, the rope, the rope,
Come, let us link it round, round, round.
And he that will not climb to-day
Why—leave him on the ground, the ground, the ground.
If you have done these things you will not make much of the call of the temple bells and the palm trees and the spicy garlic smells—least of all at New Year. You will hear instead the call of the Pillar Rock and the chorus from the lonely inn. You will don your oldest clothes and wind the rope around you—singing meanwhile “the rope, the rope,”—and take the night train, and at nine or so next morning you will step out at that gateway of the enchanted land—Keswick. Keswick! Wastdale!... Let us pause on the music of those words.... There are men to whom they open the magic casements at a breath.
And at Keswick you call on George Abraham. It would be absurd to go to Keswick without calling on George Abraham. You might as well go to Wastdale Head without calling on the Pillar Rock. And George tells you that of course he will be over at Wastdale on New Year's Eve and will climb the Pillar Rock or Scafell Pinnacle with you on New Year's Day.