LESLIE STEPHEN--1904
When that noble body of scholarly and cheerful pedestrians, the Sunday
Tramps, were on the march, with Leslie Stephen to lead them, there was
conversation which would have made the presence of a shorthand writer a
benefaction to the country. A pause to it came at the examination of the
leader's watch and Ordnance map under the western sun, and void was given
for the strike across country to catch the tail of a train offering
dinner in London, at the cost of a run through hedges, over ditches and
fellows, past proclamation against trespassers, under suspicion of being
taken for more serious depredators in flight. The chief of the Tramps
had a wonderful calculating eye in the observation of distances and the
nature of the land, as he proved by his discovery of untried passes in
the higher Alps, and he had no mercy for pursy followers. I have often
said of this life-long student and philosophical head that he had in him
the making of a great military captain. He would not have been opposed
to the profession of arms if he had been captured early for the service,
notwithstanding his abomination of bloodshed. He had a high, calm
courage, was unperturbed in a dubious position, and would confidently
take the way out of it which he conceived to be the better.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30