The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer"; or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan

I love Brighton, and if there were any probability of my ever "settling down," as it is called, anywhere in this world before the final settling down, I would just as soon it sh...

"... Here the bleak mount, The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep; Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields; And river, now with bushy rocks o'erbrowed, Now w...

Now there are no doubt thousands who would gladly follow my example, and become for a portion of the year lady or gentlemen gipsies, did not circumstances over which they have n...

"Come listen to my humble friends. Nor scorn to read their letters, The faithfulness of horse and dog Oft-times makes us their debtors. Yet selfish man leads folly's van, The th...

There is to my way of thinking a delicious uncertainty in starting on a long caravan tour, without being aware in the least what you are going to do or see, or even what route y...

Madly dashing on through the country as cyclists do, on their way to John o' Groats or elsewhere, probably at an average rate of seventy miles a day, neither scenery nor anythin...

It was to be our first outing--our trial trip, "by the measured mile," as navy sailors call it. Not so much a trial, however, for the caravan itself, as for a certain horse that...

"Ye wildlings of Nature, I doat upon you, For ye waft me to summers of old, When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight. And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sigh...

The country is indeed a Highlands in miniature. I might describe the scenery in this way: Take a sheet of paper and thereon draw irregular lines, across and across, up and down,...

As much even as the wild flowers themselves were the children a feature in the seemingly interminable panorama, that flitted past me in my long tour in the Wanderer. The wild fl...

"Here springs the oak, the beauty of the grove, Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move; Here grows the cedar, here the swelling vine Does round the elm its purple c...

Mind, I do not say that you may not be able to meet with a good and clean one, but, woe is me, there is a chance of guests, in old caravans of the gipsy class, that you would no...

"Edina! Scotia's darling seat! All hail thy palaces and towers, Where once beneath a monarch's feet Sat legislation's sov'reign powers. From marking wildly-scattered flowers, As...

"O rain! you will but take your flight, Though you should come again to-morrow, And bring with you both pain and sorrow; Though stomach should ache and knees should swell, I'll...

"The rugged mountain's scanty cloak Was dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak, And patches bright of bracken green, And heather red that waved so high, It held the copse in rivalry;...

It has occurred to me that a slightly more detailed account of the internal economy of our land-yacht, the Wanderer, might not prove devoid of interest to the reader, and I cann...

I must hasten to explain, however, that the Twyford referred to is THE Twyford--Twyford, Berks. About a dozen other Twyfords find their names recorded in the Postal Guide, from...

I would willingly draw a veil over the incidents that occurred, and the accidents that happened, to the Wanderer from the time she left Inverness by train, till the day I find m...

"From the moist meadow to the withered hill, Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs And swells and deepens to the cherished eye; The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves Pu...

"I tell you what it is, my boy," said a well-known London editor to me one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer,--"I tell you what it is, you'll _never_...

While perusing these memoirs of my gipsy life, I should be more than delighted if my readers could to some extent think as I thought, and feel as I felt.

"March! march! Ettrick and Teviotdale, Why, my lads, dinna ye march forward in order? March! march! Eskdale and Liddesdale, All the blue bonnets are over the border. Many a bann...

"I lay upon the headland height and listened To the incessant sobbing of the sea In caverns under me, And watched the waves that tossed and fled and glistened, Until the rolling...

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, `This is my own, my native land;' Whose heart has ne'er within him burned As home his weary footsteps...

"... Evening yields The world to-night... ... A faint erroneous ray, Glanced from th' imperfect surfaces of things, Flings half an image on the straining eye; While wavering woo...

Travelling through the romantic little village of Great Marlow one summer's day in a pony-trap, I came suddenly on a row of caravans drawn up on the roadside. Some flying swings...

I begin to think, reader, that the plan of putting headlines or verses to chapters, although a very ancient, time-honoured custom, is not such a very excellent one after all.

It is now well into the middle of June. Like the lapwing in autumn, I have been making short flights here, there, and everywhere within a day's march previous to the start on my...

simple, pretends to be at home in. Take the opinion of even a draper's assistant about some horse you happen to meet on the road, and lo! he begins to look knowing at once, and...

It is the morning of the 4th July, and a bright and beautiful morning it is. The storm clouds that yesterday lowered all around us have cleared away and the sun shines in an Ita...

No man who cannot live in his house on wheels, cook, eat, and sleep in, on, or under it, can say that he is cut out for a gipsy life. But to do this you require to have your tem...