I see, as I write,
the vision of a great golden-grey carp swimming lazily in the clear
pool of Arethusa, the carpet of mesembryanthemum that, for some
fancy of its own, chose to involve the whole of a railway viaduct
with its flaunting magenta flowers and its fleshy leaves. I see the
edge of the sea, near Syracuse, rimmed with a line of the intensest
yellow, and I hear the voice of a guide explaining that it was
caused by the breaking up of a stranded orange-boat, so that the
waves for many hundred yards threw up on the beach a wrack of
fruit; yet the same wilful and perverse mind will stand
impenetrably dumb and blind before the noblest and sweetest
prospect, and decline to receive any impression at all. What is
perhaps the oddest characteristic of the tricksy spirit is that it
often chooses moments of intense discomfort and fatigue to master
some scene, and take its indelible picture. I suppose that the
reason of this is that the mind makes, at such moments, a vigorous
effort to protest against the tyranny of the vile body, and to
distract itself from instant cares.
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