On my calling more peremptorily, "Vick! Vick!" she tucks her tail well in, and canters back to the house on three legs.
So it comes to pass that I set out quite alone.

I have no definite idea where to go--I walk vaguely along, following my nose, as they say, smiling foolishly, and talking to myself--now under my breath--now out loud.

A strong southwest wind blows steadily in my face: it sounded noisy and fierce enough as I sat in the house; but there is no vice or malevolence in it--it is only a soft bluster.
Alternate clouds and sunshine tenant the sky.

The shadows of the tree-trunks lie black and defined across the road--branches, twigs, every thing--then comes a sweep of steely cloud, and they disappear, swallowed up in one uniform gray: a colorless moment or two passes, and the sun pushes out again; and they start forth distinct and defined, each little shoot and great limb, into new life on the bright ground.

I laugh out loud, out of sheer jollity, as I watch the sun playing at hide-and-seek with them.
What a good world! What a handsome, merry, sweetly-colored world! Unsatisfying?
disappointing ?--not a bit of it! It must be people's own fault if they find it so.
I have walked a mile or so before I at length decide upon a goal, toward which to tend--a lone and distant cottage, tenanted by a very aged, ignorant, and feudally loyal couple--a cottage sitting by the edge of a brown common--one of the few that the greedy hand of Tillage has yet spared--where geese may still stalk and hiss unreproved, and errant-tinker donkeys crop and nibble undisturbed-- "Where the golden furze With its green thin spurs Doth catch at the maiden's gown." It is altogether a choice and goodly walk; next to nothing of the tame high-road.