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# 2025-08-19 - A Handy Guide For Beggars by Vachel Lindsay
I found this a quick and enjoyable read. Below are Vachel Lindsay's
rules of the road, my favorite poem in the book, and my favorite
chapter of the book.
# Vachel Lindsay's Rules Of The Road
(1) Keep away from the Cities;
(2) Keep away from the railroads;
(3) Have nothing to do with money and carry no baggage;
(4) Ask for dinner about quarter after eleven;
(5) Ask for supper, lodging and breakfast about quarter of five;
(6) Travel alone;
(7) Be neat, deliberate, chaste and civil;
(8) Preach the Gospel of Beauty.
# Follow The Thistledown
I asked her "Is Aladdin's Lamp
Hidden anywhere?"
"Look into your heart," she said,
"Aladdin's Lamp is there."
She took my heart with glowing hands.
It burned to dust and air
And smoke and rolling thistledown,
Blowing everywhere.
"Follow the thistledown," she said,
"Till doomsday if you dare,
Over the hills and far away.
Aladdin's Lamp is there."
# The Falls Of Tallulah
(North Georgia)
(TXT) Tallulah Gorge
## I. The Call Of The Water
The dust of many miles was upon me. I felt uncouth in the presence of
the sun-dried stones. Here was a natural bathing-place. Who could
resist it?
I climbed further down the cañon, holding to the bushes. The cliff
along which the water rushed to the fall's foot was smooth and seemed
artificially made, though it had been so hewn by the fury of the
cataclysm in ages past.
I took off my clothes and put my shoulders against the granite, being
obliged to lean back a little to conform to its angle. I was standing
with my left shoulder almost touching the perilous main column of
water. A little fall that hurried along by itself a bit nearer
the bank flowed over me. It came with headway. Though it looked so
innocent, I could scarcely hold up against its power.
But it gave me delight to maintain myself. The touch of the stone was
balm to my walk-worn body and dust-fevered feet. Like a sacerdotal robe
the water flowed over my shoulders and I thought myself priest of the
solitude.
I stepped out into the air. With unwonted energy I was able to throw
off the coldness of my wet frame. The water there at the fall's foot
was like a thousand elves singing. "Joy to all creatures!" cried the
birds. "Joy to all creatures! Glory, glory, glory to the wild falls!"
## II. The Piping Of Pan
I was getting myself sunburned, stretched out on the warm dry rocks.
Down over the steep edge, somewhere near the foot of the next descent I
heard the pipes of Pan. Why should I dress and go?
I made my shoes and clothes into a bundle, and threw them down the
cliff and climbed over, clinging to the steep by mere twigs. I seemed
to hear the piping as I approached the terrace at the fall's base. Then
the sound of music blended with the stream's strange voice and I turned
to merge myself again with its waters.
Against the leaning wall of the cliff I placed my shoulders. The
descending current smote me, wrestling with wildwood laughter,
threatening to crush me and hurl me to the base of the mountain. But
just as before my feet were well set in a notch of the cliff that went
across the stream, cut there a million years ago.
It was a curious combination to discover, this stream-wide notch, and
above it this wall with the water spread like a crystal robe over
it. In the centre of the fall a Cyclops could have stood to bathe,
and on the edge was the same provision in miniature for feeble man.
And it was the more curious to find this plan repeated in detail by
successive cataracts of the cañon, unmistakably wrought by the slow
hand of geologic ages. And to see the water of the deep central stream
undisturbed in the midst of the fall and still crystalline, and to see
it slide down the steep incline and strike each notch at the foot with
sudden music and appalling foam, was more wonderful than the simple
telling can explain.
Each sheet of crystal that came over my shoulders seemed now to pour
into them rather than over them. I lifted my mouth and drank as a
desert bird drinks rain. My downstretched arms and extended fingers and
the spreading spray seemed one. My heart with its exultant blood seemed
but the curve of a cataract over the cliff of my soul.
## III. Peril, Vanity, And Adoration
Led by the pipes of Pan, I again descended. Once more that sound,
almost overtaken, interwove itself with the water's cry, and I merged
body and soul with the stream and the music. The margin of another
cataract crashed upon me. In the recklessness of pleasure, one arm
swung into the main current. Then the water threatened my life. To save
myself, I was kneeling on one knee. I reached out blindly and found
a hold at last in a slippery cleft, and later, it seemed an age, with
the other hand I was able to reach one leaf. The leaf did not break. At
last its bough was in my grasp and I crawled frightened into the sun. I
sat long on a warm patch of grass.
But the cliffs and the water were not really my enemies. They sent a
wind to give me delight. Never was the taste of the air so sweet as
then. The touch of it was on my lips like fruit. There was a flattery
in the tree-limbs bending near my shoulders. They said, "There is
brotherhood in your footfall on our roots and the touch of your hand on
our boughs."
The spray of the splashed foam was wine. I was the unchallenged
possessor of all of nature my body and soul could lay hold upon. It
was the fair season between spring and summer when no one came to
this place. Like Selkirk, I was monarch of all I surveyed. In my
folly I seemed to feel strange powers creeping into my veins from the
sod. I forgot my near-disaster. I said in my heart, "O Mother Earth
majestical, the touch of your creatures has comforted me, and I feel
the strength of the soil creeping up into my dust. From this patch of
soft grass, power and courage come up into me from your bosom, from the
foundation of your continents. I feel within me the soul of iron from
your iron mines, and the soul of lava from your deepest fires."
## IV. The Blood Unquenchable
The satyrs in the bushes were laughing at me and daring me to try the
water again.
I stood on the edge of the rapids where were many stones coming up out
of the foam. I threw logs across. The rocks held them in place. I lay
down between the logs in the liquid ice. I defied it heartily. And my
brother the river had mercy upon me, and slew me not.
Amid the shout of the stream the birds were singing: "Joy, joy, joy to
all creatures, and happiness to the whole earth. Glory, glory, glory to
the wild falls."
I struggled out from between the logs and threw my bundle over the
cliff, and again descended, for I heard the pipes of Pan, just below me
there, too plainly for delay. They seemed to say "Look! Here is a more
exquisite place."
The sun beat down upon me. I felt myself twin brother to the sun.
My body was lit with an all-conquering fever. I had walked through
tropical wildernesses for many a mile, gathering sunshine. And now in
an afternoon I was gambling my golden heat against the icy silver of
the river and winning my wager, while all the leaves were laughing on
all the trees.
And again I stood in a Heaven-prepared place, and the water poured in
glory upon my shoulders.
* * *
Why was it so dark? Was a storm coming? I was dazed as a child in the
theatre beholding the crowd go out after the sudden end of a solemn
play. My clothes, it appeared, were half on. I was kneeling, looking
up. I counted the falls to the top of the cañon. It was night, and I
had wrestled with them all. My spirit was beyond all reason happy.
This was a day for which I had not planned. I felt like one crowned.
My blood was glowing like the blood of the crocus, the blood of
the tiger-lily. And so I meditated, and then at last the chill of
weariness began to touch me and in my heart I said, "Oh Mother Earth,
for all my vanity, I know I am but a perishable flower in a cleft of
the rock. I give thanks to you who have fed me the wild milk of this
river, who have upheld me like a child of the gods throughout this day."
Around a curve in the cañon, down stream, growing each moment sweeter,
I heard the pipes of Pan.
## V. The Gift OF Tallulah
Go, you my brothers, whose hearts are in sore need of delight, and
bathe in the falls of Tallulah. That experience will be for the
foot-sore a balm, for the languid a lash, for the dry-throated pedant
the very cup of nature. To those crushed by the inventions of cities,
wounded by evil men, it will be a washing away of tears and of blood.
Yea, it will be to them all, what it was to my heart that day, the
sweet, sweet blowing of the reckless pipes of Pan.
author: Lindsay, Vachel, 1879-1931
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Vachel_Lindsay
LOC: PS3523.I58 H3
(DIR) source: gopher://gopher.pglaf.org/1/6/7/9/4/67947/
tags: ebook,outdoor,poem,travel,vagabond
title: A Handy Guide For Beggars
# Tags
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) outdoor
(DIR) poem
(DIR) travel
(DIR) vagabond