“ There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. ”
Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). copy citation
| Author | Robert Louis Stevenson |
|---|---|
| Source | Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes |
| Topic | darkness romance guessing |
| Date | 1879 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Travels_with_a_Donkey_in_the_Cevennes |
Context
“I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities; some of them sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night; and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars.”
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Meaning and analysis
