Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

Excerpt

The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me.  After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to the end.  But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world—all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend.  He is a fortunate voyager who finds many.  We travel, indeed, to find them.  They are the end and the reward of life.  They keep us worthy of ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.