48 THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD. 



the ground becomes the one serious and engrossing 

 thought; whereas success in walking is not to let 

 your right foot know what your left foot doeth. 

 Your heart must furnish such music that in keeping 

 time to it your feet will carry you around the globe 

 without knowing it. The walker I would describe 

 takes no note of distance ; his walk is a sally, a bon- 

 mot, an unspoken jeu d'esprit ; the ground is his butt, 

 his provocation ; it furnishes him the resistance his 

 body craves ; he rebounds upon it, he glances off and 

 returns again, and uses it gayly as his tool. 



I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the 

 charms of pedestrianism, or our need as a people to 

 cultivate the art. I think it would tend to soften the 

 national manners, to teach us the meaning of leisure, 

 to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to 

 strengthen and foster the tie between the race and 

 the land. No one else looks out upon the world so 

 kindly and charitably as the pedestrian ; no one else 

 gives and takes so much from the country he passes 

 through. Next to the laborer in the fields, the 

 walker holds the closest relation to the soil ; and he 

 holds a closer and more vital relation to Nature be- 

 cause he is freer and his mind more at leisure. 



Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no 

 more than a potted plant in his house or carriage, till 

 he has established communication with the soil by the 

 !oving and magnetic touch of his soles to it. Then 

 the tie of association is born ; then spring those in 

 visible fibres and rootlets through which character 



