Essays | Page 5

path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames--the side of meadows.
The elastic resistance of the line is a "heart-animating strain," only too
slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of the riverside plants,
with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, are swept aside like a
long green breaker of flourishing green. The line drums lightly in the
ears when the bushes are high and it grows taut; it makes a telephone
for the rush of flowers under the stress of your easy power.
The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the joys of
"feeling hearts" according to the erroneous sentiment of a verse of
Moore's. The joys of sensitive hearts are many; but the joys of sensitive
hands are few. Here, however, in the effectual act of towing, is the
ample revenge of the unmuscular upon the happy labourers with the oar,
the pole, the bicycle, and all other means of violence. Here, on the long
tow-path, between warm, embrowned meadows and opal waters, you
need but to walk in your swinging harness, and so take your friends up-
stream.
You work merely as the mill-stream works--by simple movement. At
lock after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to the
wheel that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river have the
same mere force of progress.
There never was any kinder incentive of companionship. It is the bright
Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing by so
many curves of low shore on the level of the world.
Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as
the wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings the
lighted clouds or the blue to face your eyes. The birds, flying high for
mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own weight. You will

not envy them for so brief a success. Did not Wordsworth want a "little
boat" for the air? Did not Byron call him a blockhead therefor?
Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of towing.
All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry. Even
the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than you,
walking your effectual walk with the line attached to your willing steps.
Your moderate strength of a mere everyday physical education gives
you the sufficient mastery of the tow-path.
If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give it life,
and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the buoyant
burden--the yielding check--than ever before. An unharnessed walk
must begin to seem to you a sorry incident of insignificant liberty. It is
easier than towing? So is the drawing of water in a sieve easier to the
arms than drawing in a bucket, but not to the heart.
To walk unbound is to walk in prose, without the friction of the wings
of metre, without the sweet and encouraging tug upon the spirit and the
line.
No dead weight follows you as you tow. The burden is willing; it
depends upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any
depressing show of helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it apt to
set you at naught or charge you with a make-believe. It accompanies, it
almost anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just so much as to give
your briskness good reason, and to justify you if you should take to still
more nimble heels. All your haste, moreover, does but waken a more
brilliantly-sounding ripple.
The bounding and rebounding burden you carry (but it nearly seems to
carry you, so fine is the mutual good will) gives work to your figure,
enlists your erectness and your gait, but leaves your eyes free. No
watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. What little
outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer smoothly towed. Your
easy and efficient work lets you carry your head high and watch the
birds, or listen to them. They fly in such lofty air that they seem to turn
blue in the blue sky. A flash of their flight shows silver for a moment,
but they are blue birds in that sunny distance above, as mountains are
blue, and horizons. The days are so still that you do not merely hear the
cawing of the rooks--you overhear their hundred private croakings and
creakings, the soliloquy of the solitary places swept by wings.

As for songs, it is September, and the silence of July is long at an end.
This year's robins are in full voice; and the only song that is not for
love or nesting--the childish song of boy-birds, the freshest