86 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



have come to the end of my tether," instantly all the 

 smiling faces surrounding him will vanish as if by 

 magic; that the few sovereigns remaining in his 

 pocket at any time are as a chain, shortened each 

 day by a link, holding him back from some terrible 

 destiny. . . . Let us delay no longer in this moral 

 place of skulls, but follow that wise and sturdy 

 youth who, wrapping his cloak about his face, passes 

 unharmed through the poisonous atmosphere of the 

 landing-place, and hurries a thousand miles away, 

 while ever 



Before him, like a blood-red flag, 



flutters and shines the dream that lures him on. 

 And now at his journey's end comes reality to lay 

 rude hands on him with rough shaking. Meanwhile, 

 before he has quite recovered from the shock, that 

 red flag on which his dreamy eyes have been so long 

 fixed stays not, but travels on and on to disappear at 

 last like a sunset cloud in the distant horizon. He 

 does not miss it greatly after all. The .actual is 

 much in his thoughts. When a man is buffeting the 

 waves he does not curiously examine the landscape 

 before him and complain that there are no bright 

 flowers on the trees. New experience takes the 

 place of vanished dreams, which, like water-lilies, 

 blossom only on stagnant pools. Here are none of 

 the innumerable appliances to secure comfort he has 

 been used to from infancy, regarding them almost 

 as spontaneous productions of the earth ; no hand 

 to perform a hundred necessary offices, so that this 



