The Eternal Whither

There was once an old cashier in some ancient City establishment,
whose practice was to spend his yearly holiday in relieving some
turnpike-man at his post, and performing all the duties appertaining
thereunto. This was vulgarly taken to be an instance of mere
mill-horse enslavement to his groove -- the reception of payments; and
it was spoken of both in mockery of all mill-horses and for the due
admonishment of others. And yet that clerk had discovered for himself
an unique method of seeing Life at its best, the flowing, hurrying,
travelling, marketing Life of the Highway; the life of bagman and
cart, of tinker, and pig-dealer, and all cheery creatures that drink
and chaffer together in the sun. He belonged, above all, to the scanty
class of clear-seeing persons who know both what they are good for and
what they really want. To know what you would like to do is one thing;
to go out boldly and do it is another -- and a rarer; and the sterile
fields about Hell-Gate are strewn with the corpses of those who would
an if they could.

To be sure, being bent on the relaxation most congenial to one's soul,
it is possible to push one's disregard for convention too far: as is
seen in the case of another, though of an earlier generation, in the
same establishment. In his office there was the customary
''attendance-book,'' wherein the clerks were expected to sign each
day. Here his name one morning ceases abruptly from appearing; he
signs, indeed, no more. Instead of signature you find, a little later,
writ in careful commercial hand, this entry: ''Mr --- did not attend
at his office to-day, having been hanged at eight o'clock in the
morning for horse-stealing.'' Through the faded ink of this record do
you not seem to catch, across the gulf of years, some waft of the
jolly humanity which breathed in this prince among clerks? A formal
precisian, doubtless, during business hours; but with just this honest
love of horseflesh lurking deep down there in him -- unsuspected,
sweetening the whole lump. Can you not behold him, freed from his
desk, turning to pursue his natural bent, as a city-bred dog still
striveth to bury his bone deep in the hearth-rug? For no filthy lucre,
you may be sure, but from sheer love of the pursuit itself! All the
same, he erred; erred, if not in taste, at least in judgment: for we
cannot entirely acquit him of blame for letting himself be caught.

In these tame and tedious days of the policeman rampant, our
melancholy selves are debarred from many a sport, joyous and debonair,
whereof our happier fathers were free. Book-stealing, to be sure,
remains to us; but every one is not a collector; and, besides, 'tis a
diversion you can follow with equal success all the year round. Still,
the