UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT

O F

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The spring air, quick with perfume, visits
the city streets. That sun that has but gilded high
cornices all winter, now looks down brightly into the
deep courts and narrow lanes. Under all the slabbed
pavements, under the roar of rains and the tumultuous
passage of men's feet, the old earth turns in her sleep
and feels herself quick with another summer; soon from
beneath the stones she will send up her grass blades, even
into the midst of the gray city; and already, is it not
the stir and ferment of the new summer below the pavement
that gains our feet and gives them this unrest to travel,
and gains our heart and fills it with this desire for
new surroundings? So one bright morning, while
yet the city slumbers and only the earliest noises are
abroad that prelude the clamour of the day's toil, I went
forth upon a journey, I knew not whither.