The Astonishment of the Agent by G.K. Chesterton

LORD IVYWOOD shared the mental weakness of most men who have fed on / books; he ignored, not the value but the very existence of other forms / of information. Thus Humphrey Pump was perfectly aware that Lord Ivywood / considered him an ignorant man who carried a volume of Pickwick and / could not be got to read any other book. But Lord Ivywood was quite / unaware that Humphrey never looked at him without thinking that he could / be most successfully hidden in a wood of small beeches, as his / grey-brown hair and sallow, ashen face exactly reproduced the three / predominant tints of such a sylvan twilight. Mr. Pump, I fear, had / sometimes partaken of partridge or pheasant, in his early youth, under / circumstances in which Lord Ivywood was not only unconscious of the / hospitality he was dispensing, but would have sworn that it was / physically impossible for anyone to elude the vigilance of his efficient / system of game-keeping. But it is very unwise in one who counts himself / superior to physical things to talk about physical impossibility.

Lord Ivywood was in error, therefore, when he said that the fugitives / could not possibly escape in modern England. You can do a great many / things in modern England if you have noticed; some things, in fact, / which others know by pictures or current speech; if you know, for / instance, that most roadside hedges are taller and denser than they / look, and that even the largest man lying just behind them, takes up far / less room than you would suppose; if you know that many natural sounds / are much more like each other than the enlightened ear can believe, as / in the case of wind in leaves and of the sea; if you know that it is / easier to walk in socks than in boots, if you know how to take hold of / the ground; if you know that the proportion of dogs who will bite a man / under any circumstances is rather less than the proportion of men who / will murder you in a railway carriage; if you know that you need not be / drowned even in a river, unless the tide is very strong, and unless you / practise putting yourself into the special attitudes of a suicide; if / you know that country stations have objectless, extra waiting rooms that / nobody ever goes into; and if you know that county folk will forget you / if you speak to them, but talk about you all day if you don't.