When I go out of the house for a walk,
uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my
instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem,
that I finally and inevitably settle south-west,
toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that
direction. My needle is slow to settle—varies a few degrees, and does not
always point due south-west, it is true, and it has good authority for
this variation, but it always settles between west and south-south-west.
The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and
richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks, would be,
not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits,
which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening
westward, in which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round
and round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide
for the thousandth time, that I will walk into the south-west or west.
Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
