THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 39 



your mind, or some noble prospect has opened be- 

 fore you, and especially the quiet ways where you 

 have walked in sweet converse with your friend, 

 pausing under the trees, drinking at the spring, — 

 henceforth they are not the same; a new charm is 

 added; those thoughts spring there perennial, your 

 friend walks there forever. 



We have produced some good walkers and saun- 

 terers, and some noted climbers; but as a staple 

 recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the peo- 

 ple dislike and despise walking. Thoreau said he 

 was a good horse, but a poor roadster. I chant the 

 virtues of the roadster as well. I sing of the sweet- 

 ness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit. It is the 

 proper condiment for the sterner seasons, and many 

 a human gizzard would be cured of half its ills by 

 a suitable daily allowance of it. I think Thoreau 

 himself would have profited immensely by it. His 

 diet was too exclusively vegetable. A man cannot 

 live on grass alone. If one has been a lotus-eater 

 all summer, he must turn gravel-eater in the fall 

 and winter. Those who have tried it know that 

 gravel possesses an equal though an opposite charm. 

 It spurs to action. The foot tastes it and hence- 

 forth rests not. The joy of moving and surmount- 

 ing, of attrition and progression, the thirst for 

 space, for miles and leagues of distance, for sights 

 and proi^pects, to cross mountains and thread rivers, 

 and defy frost, heat, snow, danger, difficulties, 

 seizes it; and from that day forth its possessor ia 

 enrolled in the noble army of walkers. 



