THE NEW HYPERION.
FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
[!-- H2 anchor --] II.—THE TWO CHICKENS.
"Thou art no less a man because thou wearest no hauberk nor mail sark, and goest not on horseback after foolish adventures."
So I said, reassuring myself, thirty years ago, when, as Paul Flemming the Blond, I was meditating the courageous change of cutting off my soap-locks, burning my edition of Bulwer and giving my satin stocks to my shoemaker: I mean, when I was growing up—or, in the more beauteous language of that day, when Flemming was passing into the age of bronze, and the flowers of Paradise were turning to a sword in his hands.
Well, I say it again, and I say it with boldness, you can wear a tin botany-box as bravely as a hauberk, and foolish adventures can be pursued equally well on foot.