courage does not wait for fulness of years, it
would appear not to take its flight on their
arrival.

A DASH INTO YORKSHIRE.

ONE day lately, I felt myself to be very
stupid. I will not be guilty of the modest
affectation of saying, "though, by the way, that
is nothing unusual;" for, however true that maybe,
no one believes it when he says it, and such
modesty is nothing but a hypocritical pretence.
I own, without any reservation whatever, that,
on the occasion I refer to, I was stupid.
Plodding day after day, and week after week, in the
same beaten track, round and round like a
millhorse, I was getting into a dazed mechanical
state, and I felt that if I did not bolt and kick
up my heels I should become idiotic. I tried
to think coherently, and I couldn't. I tried to
speak coherently about the most common-place
matters, and I couldn't. When any one
challenged me to express my views with
regard to that easiest of topics, the weather,
I found that I was incapable of going straight
to the point. I was unable to say, in so
many words, that it was very wet weather
when it was raining cats and dogs. Or if the
sun shone, I found it equally difficult to declare
that it was fine. My sentences came out wrong
end first. I had no ideas upon any subject
whatever, or if I had I was quite unable to
express them in intelligible words. I was beginning
to have a vague sense that my brain was
gone, and that there was nothing left in my
skull for my senses to act upon.

"When I was in this state, gravely doubting
whether I should ever have the use of my faculties
any more, I suddenly formed my resolution.
I am generally a well-ordered person, and, as a
rule, never do anything without due consideration.
There is nothing flighty or capricious in my
character. Yet on this occasion my conduct was
flighty and capricious in the last degree. At nine
o'clock in the morning I had no idea of leaving
London for many weeks; but at nine o'clock
that night I was more than two hundred miles
away from London, in a town where I did not
know a single soul, and in which I had no
business whatever. When I formed my resolution,
I was in the street, proceeding to my mill.
Suddenly I turned on my heel, retraced my
steps to my chambers, and packed a little
carpet-bag with a change of clothes. In ten
minutes I was in the street again, with the
carpet-bag in my hand. In what direction
should I bend my steps? I had no idea on the
subject. I scarcely knew for what purpose I
was carrying the carpet-bag. Walking on and
on, I found myself in the Marylebone-road. I
was at a station of the underground railway.
I did not fancy that. Presently I came in sight
of the Ionic portico of the London and North-
Western. I never liked that severe portico.
It did not invite me. By-and-by the clock of
the Great Northern peeped down upon me over
the tops of the houses. It was like the face of
an old friend. In times gone I had looked up
at that clock, when my heart beat high with
thoughts of home far away among the northern
hills.

Through the gate underneath, I had many
times passed on to happiness. I knew that I
could not go home now; but I would be on the
road; my face would be towards it. I might
beguile myself with the idea that I was going
the old hopeful journey to the end. The big
round face of the clock seemed to smile upon
me; the hands seemed to beckon me. I entered
the terminus, and, without any idea as to my
destination, or the times when trains started,
presented myself at the ticket-office.

I merely said to the clerk, "A ticket."

"Where for?" he asked.

I thought for a moment, and answered "Yorkshire,"
it having, in that moment of reflection,
come into my head that I had heard and read
much of that famous county, and had never
been in it, except to set foot upon the platform
at York in passing through to the far north.

"Where in Yorkshire?" the clerk asked,
looking at me very hard.

While he was asking the question my eye
fell upon the word "Leeds," on the panel of
his box.

"Leeds," I said, mechanically.

He handed me a ticket, and in five minutes'
time I was in a comfortable first-class carriage
rattling away for a place that I had never
visited in my life, and in which I did not know
a single soul.

Awaking to a sense of being in for an
unusual enterprise, I suddenly began to find my
brains and my coherence of speech. A fellow
passenger challenged me on the abstruse
subject of cultivation by steam, and I found that I
knew a good deal about it, and could deliver
myself quite fluently. My mental vacuity was
dispelled, as a toothache is sometimes cured by
the sight of the dentist's brass plate. At the
dentist's door you can turn back; but when you
put yourself into an express train at King's
Cross, there is no turning back until you reach
Peterborough. I thought I would turn back
at Peterborough; but when I got to
Peterborough, my blood was up, that is to say, it was
in an active state of circulation, and I was
ready for anything. I determined to go on to
Leeds, though what I was going to do when I
got there I had not the slightest idea.

Thinking about Yorkshire, I become deeply
interested in that county and its inhabitants.
I recal all that I have read of the characteristics
of the people, their quaint sayings, the Yorkshiremen
I have seen in pieces at the theatres, wearing
red waistcoats, saying "dom it," and talking
about pints of "yell" and going "whoam."
Old scenes in novels come back to me, scenes
in which Yorkshiremen made a display of their
honesty and their appetites in an athletic sort of
a way, as if honesty and eating were feats of
strength with them. Wakefield conjured up
the good old vicar, and Moses buying the