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away from the road 35
The whole place lay held in the water-fall noise.
He would come up alone to see
what the day here would be like
this time, on this or the other
branch of the little river.
He had been doing so since the days
when few people came up here. He still
liked the hidden edge of danger
here, and the change from the useful
and not so useful routines
at home. As he walked along
taking in things around, his mind
might, on its own, work at some
persisting diffi
culty in some of
his reading, or in some writing,
and the lacking thing arrive by itself,
he getting it down without delay,
having learned that his memory could
not be trusted with it. The other day
he had read in Aubrey that Hobbes
when at work on Leviathan
often took walks and kept a pen
and inkhorn in the head of
his walking-staff , so that when `a
notion darted,' he could write it
down, on the spot.
-- Coming up here
was no escape from any
bad time he was having. He'd learned
that the bad time tagged along.