174 OUT OF DOOMS. 



twenty, one of the first in the field and all the rustic 

 sports. After a vast amount of prevarication he flatly 

 refused to leave the forest, and when peremptorily 

 ordered to do so he sat down on the road-side, and 

 sobbed like a child with sheer terror of the unknown 

 regions beyond his ken. An exact parallel to his de- 

 spairing fears maybe often seen in the crowded thorough- 

 fares of London, where a child has lost its way, and 

 stands weeping in the depths of its misery, beset on 

 all sides by vague fears, and as hopelessly bewildered 

 as if it had been suddenly transplanted to a new planet. 

 Take such a man out of the forest, run him oflf by 

 express train to London, put him down at London 

 Bridge or Charing Cross, and he would become a maniac 

 from the rush of ideas to the brain, like that Kaffir 

 chief whose head was turned by the sights on board of 

 a steamer, and who deliberately hauled himself to the 

 bottom of the sea by means of the chain cable. 



There is also a strange race of beings called the 

 woodmen, who possess certain prescriptive rights from 

 time immemorial. They are the most independent set 

 imaginable, and laugh at law or justice. Their carts 

 are at least two feet wider than is allowed by legal 

 authority, and while driving along the road they are 

 totally regardless of the right and wrong side. Those 

 who meet them may turn aside if they like, but they 

 proceed on their course without paying the least respect 

 to the tacit regulations of the road. One Saturday, 

 while driving on the high road, we met a long string 



