Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/338

326 special freedom of rural life consists. You are certainly watched, and your actions, looks, and behaviour commented on fifty times more by your idle neighbours in the country, gasping for gossip, than by your busy neighbours in town, who never trouble themselves to turn their heads when you pass them in the street, or even find out your name, if you live next door. In the country, you have generally the option of going on either of three or four roads. In London you have the choice of as many thousand streets. In the country you may 'kill something' whenever you may take your walks abroad, if that special privilege of the British gentleman be dear to your soul, and you care to shoot, hunt, or fish. Or, if you are of the softer sex or sort, you may amuse yourself in your garden or shrubbery, play croquet, teach in the village school, or pay a visit to some country neighbour who will bore you to extinction. In London you have ten times as large a choice of occupations, and five hundred times as pleasant people to visit; seeing that in the country even clever men and women grow dull, and in town the most stupid get frotté with other people's ideas and humour.

"Again — and this is a most important consideration in favour of London — when a man has no particular bodily pain or mental affliction, and is not in want of money, the worst evil which he has to dread is ennui. To be bored is the 'one great grief of life' to people who have no other grief. But can there be any question whether ennui is better avoided in London or in the country? Even in the month of August, as somebody has remarked, 'when London is "empty," there are always more people in it than anywhere else;' and where there are people there must be the endless play of human interests and sympathies. Nay, for my part, I find a special gratification in the cordiality wherewith my acquaintances, left stranded like myself by chance in the dead season, hail me when we meet in Pall Mall like shipwrecked mariners on a rock; and in the respectful enthusiasm wherewith I am greeted in the half-deserted shops, where in July I made my modest purchases unnoticed and unknown. In the country, on the contrary, ennui stalks abroad all the year round, and the puerile ceremonies wherewith the ignorant natives strive to conjure away the demon — the dismal tea and croquet parties, the deplorable archery meetings, and above all, the really frightful antediluvian institution, called 'spending a day' — only place us more helplessly at his mercy. We conjugate the reflective verb 'to be bored,' in all moods and tenses: not in the light and airy way of townsfolk, when they trivially observe they were 'bored at such a party last night,' or decline to be 'bored by going to hear such a preacher on Sunday morning,' but sadly and in sober earnest, as men who recognize that boredom is a chronic disease from which they have no hope of permanent relief. There is, in short, the same difference between ennui in the country and ennui in town, as between thirst in the midst of Sahara, and thirst in one's own home, where one may ring the bell at any moment and call for soda-water."

So speaks the modern Town Mouse, describing the more superficial and obvious advantages of his abode over those of his friend in the country. And (equally on the surface of things) straightway replies —

"There is some sense in these boasts of my illustrious friend and guest, but against them I think I can produce equivalent reasons for preferring the country. In the first place, if he live faster I live longer; and I have better health than he all the time. My lungs are not clogged with smoke, my brain not addled by eternal hurry and interruption, my eyes not dimmed by fog and gaslight into premature blindness. While his limbs are stiffening year by year till he can only pace along his monotonous pavement, I retain till the verge of old age much of the agility and vigour wherewith I walked the moors and climbed the mountains in my youth. He is pleased at having twenty times as many sensations in a day as I; but if nineteen out of the twenty be jarring noises, noxious smells, plague, worry, and annoyance, I am quite content with my humbler share of experience. Even if his thick-coming sensations and ideas were all pleasant, I doubt if he ever have the leisure necessary to enjoy them. Very little would be gained by the most exquisite dinner ever cooked, and the finest wines ever bottled, if a man should be obliged to gobble them standing up, while his train, just ready to start, is whistling behind him. Londoners gulp their pleasures, we country folk sip such as come in our way; think of them a long time in advance with pleasant anticipation, and 