LADIES' COLUMN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8832, 19 January 1907, Page 3

LADIES' COLUMN.

VAGABONDAGE. (By R. H. SHERARD.) 'Author of "The Cry of the Poor," "The White Slaves of England," Etc., etc. [Aix Rights Reserved.} How very thin is in fact the veneer ©f civilisation, which in each one of us masks the original man, shows itself very strikingly by the feeling that comes to eveiy citizen, no. matter how staid nor how respectable he may be, ; who in the course of a sedate, urban ( walk happens to pass a gipsy caravan, come strolling players, some travelj stained and vagrant men. The heart of every man is moved as though by " envy, . and his' bosom is vaguely filled | with regret as he caste his eyes upon men and women who live untrammelled •by our social laws, to whose wandering spirit no bounds are set. For the spirit or wandering, the bent for vagabondage !*_!_ inherent; they are factors in our moral: and physical composition, they are the essential manifestation of that energy which is part of our very .vitality. The laws which repress vagabondage, and in no country are they more pitilessly severe than in England, are as foolish- as the sumptuary laws at .which modern students of English history i laugh as they turn over the dusty pages '-'of our national records. Yet it was far less absurd to say that a man who had not a certain income should not wear •ilk nor drink wine, than it is to tell . mea who are nomadic by birth and character, that they must not, wander over the face of the earth. Just as sensible would it be to bid the .swallow take up her winter quarters with, us, j under pains and penalties. You cannot transform human nature by Act of Parliament, ahd who shall say with what Wonder the tramp in the dock at county petty sessions listens to the pronouncements of Justice Shallow on the criminality of wandering on and on. *"•' But all the birches in the world will not eradicate from the human 'heart the Wanderlust of which the German poet flings. It is in us and there it will Remain. All the straining after violent Bxercise is only a striving for ■aome outlet for that energy which under natural conditions would be applied to the long jour- ,. neyinjjp over forward arid forward. Man is not an animal who is destined to remain in one place. He is essentially active, he is curious, he. wante ever to ,see new things. Aii quid novi, that is his desideratum. Civilisation which-_as camped him in cantonments has not stifled his primseval impulse of moving ; forward. . # .. The huge success of the excursion j Agencies snow how - strong the feeling .is even in staid citizens of to-day. And - if one comes to analyse what is the reason why excursions are so popular, It becomes at onoe apparent that the attraction of an excursion is not that "the journey takes the tourist to some new place of interest to him, but the journey itself. It _is the feeling , of moving on, of moving away, of vagabondage in short, that prompts people /to undertake these trips, m which every discomfort awaits them, and where, the time allowed for visiting the place to which they_ are conveyed is so short that their curiosity may not even be satisfied. . _ ' \ What receives satisfaction is the JWanderlust^ the " same spirit which puts men. on the roads for their lifetime, which makes rogues and vaga,'bonds- of them, which prompts them cheerfully to face the terrors of the casual .ward and all the severities of the law. The student of human nature, the psychologist, of even very fcnoderate observation, sees no more to blame in "the hirsute tramp of the ■Weary Willie yariety than he does in (bhe "cheap tripper" at whom it is ■customaiy for people to turn up their Superior noses. Both yield to the irresistible impulse of their natures and anove on, the one ever ahd ever,' the other ac circumstance allows him to !d». ■■ i Men who study the important ques- ' itaon of emigration, are cognisant of a spirit which -moves masses of humanity with the same regularity, the same ; almost i-ythmio .regularity, and the 'earne utterly irresistible force as the moon moves the tides. This tspirit ie called in Germany, from. which country the tide sets, the Trieb nach Westen v the ■ impulse towards the west.' The tide of humanity sets from East to West, and it is in this well-established fact that lies the menace to European civilisation. The time must inevitably come when this impulse shall bring the hordes of Asia once more pouring into Europe, as so many times, before in the 'history of the world it has 'done. During an investigation made some months ago, as to the reasons which brought sucn quantities of poor people from Russia and Poland iit&o -England and America, where as they Veil knew there was neither work for them nor any other > prospect but that of hunger and privation in a land which was not their own. and where they oould neither hope to' inspire pity, nor to find friends, it was established by the evnlence of people in close contact with the "emigrants that these seemed *to -obey' an indefinable impulse to move on, to move westwards. Many left homes and families without any prospect of hopes of betterment, affronted perils and death, simply to obey an Impulse Which was so' strong within them that they found it useless to attempt to resist it. The same impulse prompts your tramp. He prefers the comfort of a home, the advantages of v regular meals, he is no more adverse to warmth and food, and decent raiment and the respect of his contemporaries than the staidest grand-juror of us all. But the wandering spirit is in him, and he cannot fight against it. 60. amidst suffering that ends only with his life, under the abuse and contumely of his fellow / countrymen, he wanders from gaol to gaolj from the horrors of .one workhouse to another. He is in. rags, he is often wet through, be never is jproperly shod, he is never properly fed. xet he satisfies the Spirit within him that makes him ; ever expand his horizon, that makes him feel that he would choke in any narrow -space, and it may be supposed that he ts happy, fer all men ensure their hap* piness m this world. -<■■ One sees the same spirit manifested in that "grand tour" which formerly was considered part of the education - of every young gentleman, and which to-day still obtains, though under a - different name. Tie French say that "journeys form young people." Travelling is everywhere admitted to be both good for the body and good for Ihe mind. In Europe, if hot in England, the journeyman still exists everywhere. '" The journeyman is the travelling craftsman, the vagabond artisan, who goes from one town to another, Working a period in each and learning thus the ways of each town in his land while he gathers knowledge of men and § laces. - In France the " tour de -ranee" is still practised by craftsmen with the same ardour and interest as In the Middle Ages. Many of the young artisans who -thus wander all Over France exercising their trades in tvery town where they oan find employment still keep to the high roads, and nave trains and bicycles to others. The pleasure of walking, knapsack on back, A stout stick in the hand, to new and newer places appeals' to many. In Siermany every workman has his Wanerjahre, of which he speaks all his •life through with pleasure and regret. To which of us has never oome that longing to be up and away, knapsack tightly strapped across the shoulders, ptwk in hand — to go straight forward towards some favourite star? One selects no destination, one sees only a long line of road between green hedges and pleasant places, and the impulse is to Sralk on and on. along that white streak (

till each night fatigue puts a period to one's onward motion and one gathers fresh strength' for the morrow's journey. A characteristic story is told by Alphonse Daudet of how as a young man with two friends they went on a warning tour in Germany. They did not know -German, and they were not very rich, but Daudet speaks of those days as amongst the happiest of a life which was singularly full of pleasures. They had learned a few German phrases, which they used to sing on entering an inn, for they Had discovered that by singing German they could make themselves understood, whilst if they spoke the words their pronunciation rendered their speech void of meaning. "We used to enter the Wirtehaus and start singing ' Wir wollen drinken Bier. Wir Wollen drinken Bier ; Wir wollen essen Kaes. Wir wollen essen Kaes.' The innkeepers sometimes thought we were three madmen and took defensive measures, but we soon convinced them that we were but three harmless French vagabonds, and then everybody was very sympathetic." The ruling passion of man is said to be strongest in death. It is a pathetic pathological circumstance which, one has noticed that people who are dying of consumption manifest in their conversation how strongly this wandering impulse burns within their emaciated and impotent frames. It is no unusual thing to hear a consumptive who has but a few hours more to live speaking of the journeys he means to undertake as soon as he gets well — a matter of days, asx he opines. He plans out immense voyages. Walking trips are favoured in these disordered dreams. The body in which but a spark of vitality is left glows for a moment with the fire and energy of youth and strength. A few hours before the poet Ernest Dowson breathed his last, he was conversing with his, friend on his plans for the following winter, and he appeared to have decided upon a long walking tour in France. Megalomania is a certain fore-runner of that awful living death, general paralysis. But in some ojases the first sign of the approaching catastrophe is afforded by the conversation of the patient. He will begin to talk of journeys that he is about to undertake. In some cases he starts away from home, under the impulse, and rides, or runs, or travels enormous distances. One has heard ! of men who having disappeared from home have been discovered in the other hemisphere stricken to the ground with the fell malady. Before it came on, the spirit of wandering leaped into flame within them and d-qovetnem far afield. It is because we really know that this instinct is within us all, that at any moment it may jump into vigorous power and set us jogging, that in our heart of hearts, staid grand-jurors though we may be, we never feel really indignant with' vagrant men, that the romany has our lurking sympathy, and that our eyes follow, not without # a glint of regret or the gleam of a rising tear, tlie free unrestrained, onward walk of men (and women whose lives no walls bound, no laws limit. These indeed, we feel, can call the winds their brothers and the stars their sisters.