They will no more seek
out your peculiar humor than they will name you in speaking with
you.
VIII
Nothing in England seeks you out, except the damp. Your
impressions, you have to fight for them. What you see or hear
seems of accident. The sort of people you have read of your whole
life, and are most intimate with in fiction, you must surprise.
They no more court observance than the birds in whose seasonable
slaughter society from the King down delights. In fact, it is
probable that, if you looked for both, you would find the gunner
shyer than the gunned. The pheasant and the fox are bred to give
pleasure by their chase; they are tenderly cared for and watched
over and kept from harm at the hands of all who do not wish to
kill them for the joy of killing, and they are not so elusive but
they can be seen by easy chance. The pheasant especially has at
times all but the boldness of the barnyard in his fearless port.
Once from my passing train, I saw him standing in the middle of a
ploughed field, erect, distinct, like a statue of himself,
commemorative of the long ages in which his heroic death and
martyr sufferance have formed the pride of princes and the peril
of poachers.
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