I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering,
in getting to the top of everything and overlooking
everything. Satan was the most celebrated of
Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an
exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms
of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing
on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in
beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look
like insects at his feet. It is from the valley
that things look large; it is from the level that
things look high; I am a child of the level and have
no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will
lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my
help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the hills,
unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything
is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am
in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and
let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like
flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you.
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but
only for want of wonder.
II
A Piece of Chalk
I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver,
in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself
away from the task of doing nothing in particular,
and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick,
and put six very bright-coloured chalks in my pocket.
I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the
rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible
old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner
and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper.
She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and
she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence
of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that
if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting
to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted
to do; indeed, it is a thing which I have found to
be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt
very much on the varying qualities of toughness and
endurance in the material. I explained to her
that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and that
I did not want them to endure in the least; and that
from my point of view, therefore, it was a question,
not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface,
a thing comparatively irrelevant in a parcel.
When she understood that I wanted to draw she offered
to overwhelm me with note-paper, apparently supposing
that I did my notes and correspondence on old brown
paper wrappers from motives of economy.
I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical
shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked
the quality of brownness in paper, just as I liked
the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer,
or in the peat-streams of the North. Brown paper
represents the primal twilight of the first toil of
creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two
you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold,
