There was a very balky horse in town which nobody could drive. A kind gentleman undertook to drive him through the White Mountains. His owner laughed, and said: “You can not drive out of town, much less through the mountains.” He said quietly, “I think I will manage him,” and he did, in this way. He filled the carriage-box with books, and when the horse balked he quietly flung the reins on the hook, took out a book and began to read, and waited patiently until the horse saw fit to start. This he did two or three times, and the horse was cured.
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See [Static Progress].
Waiting for Enlightenment—See [Drink].
Walking—See [Following Inexactly]; [Gait and Character].
WALKING FOR INSPIRATION
Much bending over the folio does not make the better part of poetry or of prose. It inheres as much in the physiological condition that results from the swinging of the legs, which movement quickens heart action and stimulates the brain by supplying it with blood charged with the life-giving principle of the open air.
In spite of his club-foot, Byron, one of the most fecund, if not the most moral, of poets, managed to walk about in the open to an extent that should shame the verse-writer of to-day, clinging to his strap in the trolley-car. Wordsworth walked all over the Cumberland district and the neighboring country. Wherever he happened to be he poked into every secret corner. Shelley, we are told, rambled everywhere. Despite all unseemly cavil as to Tennyson’s drinking habits, I should say that he drew more inspiration from his walks than from his wine. Goethe, who during his lifetime required fifty thousand bottles of the vintner’s best to sweeten his imagination, found his extensive walks about Weimar a source of great inspirational profit. (Text.)—Bailey Millard, The Critic.
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WALKING WITH GOD