"Not take your camera!" he said. "You are going to Germany - to
Rhineland! You are going to pass through some of the most
picturesque scenery, and stay at some of the most ancient and famous
towns of Europe, and are going to leave your photographic apparatus
behind you, and you call yourself an artist!"
He said I should never regret a thing more in my life than going
without that camera.
I think it is always right to take other people's advice in matters
where they know more than you do. It is the experience of those who
have gone before that makes the way smooth for those who follow.
So, after supper, I got together the things I had been advised to
take with me, and arranged them on the bed, adding a few articles I
had thought of all by myself.
I put up plenty of writing paper and a bottle of ink, along with a
dictionary and a few other books of reference, in case I should feel
inclined to do any work while I was away. I always like to be
prepared for work; one never knows when one may feel inclined for
it. Sometimes, when I have been away, and have forgotten to bring
any paper and pens and ink with me, I have felt so inclined for
writing; and it has quite upset me that, in consequence of not
having brought any paper and pens and ink with me, I have been
unable to sit down and do a lot of work, but have been compelled,
instead, to lounge about all day with my hands in my pockets.
Accordingly, I always take plenty of paper and pens and ink with me
now, wherever I go, so that when the desire for work comes to me I
need not check it.
That this craving for work should have troubled me so often, when I
had no paper, pens, and ink by me, and that it never, by any chance,
visits me now, when I am careful to be in a position to gratify it,
is a matter over which I have often puzzled.
But when it does come I shall be ready for it.
I also put on the bed a few volumes of Goethe, because I thought it
would be so pleasant to read him in his own country. And I decided
to take a sponge, together with a small portable bath, because a
cold bath is so refreshing the first thing in the morning.
B. came in just as I had got everything into a pile. He stared at
the bed, and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was packing.
