Selected Stories by Robert Walser Page B

vanishes and then they fall out of their childishness into the dry calculating
     manner and tedious perceptions of adults. For the children of poor folk the country
     road in summer is like a playroom. Where else can they go, seeing that the gardens
     are selfishly closed to them? Woe to the automobiles blustering by, as they ride coldly
     and maliciously into the children’s games, into the child’s heaven, so that small
     innocent human beings are in danger of being crushed to a pulp. The terrible thought
     that a child actually can be run over by such a clumsy triumphal car, I dare not think
     it, otherwise my wrath will seduce me to coarse expressions, with which it is well
     known nothing much ever gets done.”
    To people sitting in a blustering dust-churning automobile I always present my austere
     and angry face, and they do not deserve a better one. Then they believe that I am
     a spy, a plainclothes policeman, delegated by high officials and authorities to spy
     on the traffic, to note down the numbers of vehicles, and later to report them. I
     always then look darkly at the wheels, at the car as a whole, but never at its occupants,
     whom I despise, and this in no way personally, but purely on principle; for I do not
     understand, and I never shall understand, how it can be a pleasure to hurtle past
     all the images and objects which our beautiful earth displays, as if one had gone
     mad and had to accelerate for fear of misery and despair. In fact, I love repose and
     all that reposes. I love thrift and moderation and am in my inmost self, in God’s
     name, unfriendly toward any agitation and haste. More than what is true I need not
     say. And because of these words the driving of automobiles will certainly not be discontinued,
     nor its evil air-polluting smell, which nobody for sure particularly loves or esteems.
     It would be unnatural if someone’s nostrils were to love and inhale with relish that
     which for all correct nostrils, at times, depending perhaps on the mood one is in,
     outrages and evokes revulsion. Enough, and no harm meant. And now walk on. Oh, it
     is heavenly and good and in simplicity most ancient to walk on foot, provided of course
     one’s shoes or boots are in order.
    Would the esteemed ladies and gentlemen, patrons and patronesses and circles of readers,
     while they benevolently tolerate and condone this perhaps somewhat too solemn and
     high-strutting style, now be so kind as to allow me duly to draw their attention to
     two particularly significant persons, forms, or figures, namely firstly, or better,
     first, to an alleged retired actress, and secondly to the most youthful presumed budding
     cantatrice? I hold these two people to be considerably weighty and therefore I believed
     it wise to announce and advertise them properly in advance, before they enter and
     figure in reality, so that an odor of significance and fame may run before these two
     gentle creatures, and they may be received and observed on their appearance with all
     distinction, due regard, and loving concern, such as one should, in my diminutive
     opinion, almost compulsorily accord to such beings. Then at about half past twelve
     the writer will, as is known, in reward for his many labors, eat, carouse, and dine
     in the palazzo, or house, of Frau Aebi. Till then, however, he will have to cover
     a considerable stretch of his road, and write a fair quantity of lines. But one realizes
     to be sure to satiety that he loves to walk as well as he loves to write; the latter
     of course perhaps just a shade less than the former.
    In front of a very attractive house I saw, very close to the beautiful road, a woman
     seated on a bench, and hardly had I glimpsed her when I plucked up the courage to
     speak, addressing her, in the most polite and courteous terms possible, as follows:
    “Forgive me, a person utterly unknown to you, if at the sight of you the eager and
     assuredly saucy question forces itself to my lips,