Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices | Page 5

good
books for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant to see these things
in such a lonesome by-place--so very agreeable to find these evidences
of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness
and trimness of the house--so fanciful to imagine what a wonder a
room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village--what
grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers over the
earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world, some
old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment
known to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old
Cumberland--it was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these
rambling thoughts over the choice oatcake and the genial whiskey, that
Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to
pass that the men in the fields were never heard of more, how the
stalwart landlord replaced them without explanation, how his dog-cart
came to be waiting at the door, and how everything was arranged
without the least arrangement for climbing to old Carrock's shoulders,
and standing on his head.
Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted

out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got into
the landlord's light dog-cart, and rattled off through the village for the
foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. The
Cumberland road went up and down like all other roads; the
Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other
curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly,
as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their race. The approach to the
foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other
mountains all over the world. The cultivation gradually ceased, the
trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually rougher, and the
sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more lofty, and more
and more difficult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely
farm-house. The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in
an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides,
led the way to the ascent. Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of
the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very
lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence
of the contentment within and the moisture without. Only in the bosom
of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state. He
kept it a secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when
the ascent began, to have been back again at the inn. The sides of
Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden in
mist. The rain was falling faster and faster. The knees of Mr.
Idle--always weak on walking excursions--shivered and shook with
fear and damp. The wet was already penetrating through the young
man's outer coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket, for which he had
reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he had
no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet of clammy
gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody to push
him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front, nobody to
speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness of
the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable folly of climbing,
undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there is level ground
within reach to walk on instead. Was it for this that Thomas had left
London? London, where there are nice short walks in level public
gardens, with benches of repose set up at convenient distances for
weary travellers--London, where rugged stone is humanely pounded

into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into smooth slabs
for the pavement! No! it was not for the laborious ascent of the crags of
Carrock that Idle had left his native city, and travelled to Cumberland.
Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had committed a
very grave error in judgment than when he found himself standing in
the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the
responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to the top
of it.
The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the
mournful Idle brought up the rear. From time to time, the two foremost
members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but
the rearguard never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the
mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs,
skirting the