And here, as fit illustration of these beneficent powers, which can
free us from a life where we stifle and raise us into a life where we
can breathe and grow, let me record my gratitude to a certain young
goat, which, on one occasion, turned what might have been a detestable
hour into a pleasant one.
The goat, or rather kid, a charming gazelle-like creature, with
budding horns and broad, hard forehead, was one of my fourteen fellow
passengers in a third-class carriage on a certain bank holiday
Saturday. Riding and standing in such crowded misery had cast a
general gloom over all the holiday makers; they seemed to have
forgotten the coming outing in sullen hatred of all their neighbours;
and I confess that I too began to wonder whether Bank Holiday was an
altogether delightful institution. But the goat had no such doubts.
Leaning against the boy who was taking it holiday-making, it tried
very gently to climb and butt, and to play with its sulky fellow
travellers. And as it did so it seemed to radiate a sort of poetry on
everything: vague impressions of rocks, woods, hedges, the Alps,
Italy, and Greece; mythology, of course, and that amusement of "jouer
avec des chèvres apprivoisées," which that great charmer M. Renan has
attributed to his charming Greek people. Now, as I realised the joy of
the goat on finding itself among the beech woods and short grass of
the Hertfordshire hills, I began also to see my other fellow
travellers no longer as surly people resenting each other's presence,
but as happy human beings admitted once more to the pleasant things of
life. The goat had quite put me in conceit with bank holiday. When it
got out of the train at Berkhampstead, the emptier carriage seemed
suddenly more crowded, and my fellow travellers more discontented. But
I remained quite pleased, and when I had alighted, found that instead
of a horrible journey, I could remember only a rather exquisite little
adventure. That beneficent goat had acted as Pegasus; and on its small
back my spirit had ridden to the places it loves.
In this fashion does the true æsthete tend to prefer, even like the
austerest moralist, the delights which, being of the spirit, are most
independent of circumstances and most in the individual's own keeping.