THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 23 



tread is a morning star," he feels defrauded, and as 

 if I had played him a trick. And yet nothing less 

 than dilatation and enthusiasm like this is the badge 

 of the master walker. 



If we are not sad, we are careworn, hurried, dis 

 contented, mortgaging the present for the promise 

 of the future. If we take a walk, it is as we take a 

 prescription, with about the same relish and with 

 about the same purpose ; and the more the fatigue, 

 the greater our faith in the virtue of the medicine. 



Of those gleesome saunters over the hills in spring, 

 or those sallies of the body in winter, those excur 

 sions into space when the foot strikes fire at every 

 step, when the air tastes like a new and finer mix 

 ture, when we accumulate force and gladness as we 

 go along, when the sight of objects by the roadside 

 and of the fields and woods pleases more than pic 

 tures or than all the art in the world, those ten 

 or twelve mile dashes that are but the wit and efflu 

 ence of the corporeal powers, of such diversion 

 and open road entertainment, I say, most of us 

 know very little. 



I notice with astonishment that at our fashionable 

 watering-places nobody walks ; that, of all those vast 

 crowds of health-seekers and lovers of country air, 

 you can never catch one in the fields or woods, or 

 guilty of trudging along the country road with dust 

 on his shoes and sun-tan on his hands and face. 

 The sole amusement seems to be to eat and dress 



