Portions of Chapters VI., VII., IX., XI., XXVIII. appeared originally in articles contributed to Country Life, and Chapter XXII. and parts of II., X., XXXIII. in articles contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, to the Editors of which journals the author desires to make all due acknowledgment.
A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
PROLOGUE
HOW I CAME TO BE A TRAMP
I BROUGHT myself up on Carlyle and found him the dearest, gentlest, bravest, noblest man. The Life by Froude was dearer to me than the Gospel of St Matthew, or Hamlet, or Macbeth, and that is saying much if the reader only knew me. Carlyle was so near that I saw him in dreams and spoke with him in words that were true, unquestionably. In the vision world of my dream he behaved exactly as he would have done in real life, I am sure of it. He was flesh and blood to me. Yet he died and was buried before I was born. How strange! This man who died three years before I was born was a friend closer to me than a lover, one to whom I longed to say caressing words, one whom I longed to embrace and fondle—to kiss even.
He made me work, the dear, irascible, eloquent old sage. I worked at his bidding and set myself impossible tasks—impossible! I became a puritan, serious, intolerant and heroic; and in moments of rapture, conscious of the silence of the stars and the graves, I would sing to the night the marching song:
“Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness,
Here is all fulness,