A
moor, as I understand, implies a sort of wildness, but nothing
could be more domestic than the peaceful fields between which I
had come so far, and now easily found my way back to the station.
Easily, I say, but there was one point where the road forked,
though I was sure it had not forked before, and I felt myself
confronted with some sort, any sort, of exciting adventure. By
taking myself firmly in hand, and saying, "It was yonder to the
left where I met my kind bicycler, and we vainly communed of my
evanescent battle-field," and so keeping on, I got safely to the
station with nothing more romantic in my experience than a
thrilling apprehension.
II
I quite forgot Marston Moor in my self-gratulation and my
recognition of the civility from every one which had so
ineffectively abetted my search. Simple and gentle, how
hospitable they had all been to my vain inquiry, and how
delicately they had forborne to visit the stranger with the irony
of the average American who is asked anything, especially
anything he does not know! I went thinking that the difference
was a difference between human nature long mellowed to its
conditions, and human nature rasped on its edges and fretted by
novel circumstances to a provisional harshness.
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