he assures himself. He will "take the shortest way round and stay at home." "Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here," he says, underscoring the final word. As if whatever place a man might move to would not be "here" to him! As if he could run away from his own shadow! So I interpret the italics.
His protestations, characteristically unqualified and emphatic, imply that thoughts of travel have beset him. Probably they beset every outdoor philosopher at this short-day season. They are part of the autumnal crop. Our northern world begins to look—in cloudy moods—like a place to escape from. The birds have gone, the leaves have fallen, the year is done. "Let us arise and go also," an inward voice seems to whisper. Not unlikely there is in us all the dormant remainder of an outworn migratory instinct. Civilization has caged us and tamed us; "hungry generations" have trodden us down; but below consciousness and memory there still persists the blind stirring of ancestral impulse. The fathers were nomads,
