sharp northern air streamed in through the windows. Return, indeed, was bitter; Endymion-like, 'my first touch of the earth went nigh to kill:' but it was only to hurry northwards again on the wings of imagination, from dust and heat to the dear mountain air. 'We are only the children who might have been,' murmured Lamb's dream-babes to him; and for the sake of those dream-journeys, the journeys that might have been, I still hail with a certain affection the call of the engine in the night: even as I love sometimes to turn the enchanted pages of the railway A B C, and pass from one to the other name reminiscent or suggestive of joy and freedom, Devonian maybe, or savouring of Wessex, or bearing me away to some sequestered reach of the quiet Thames.
