20 THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 



principles, in direct contact and intercourse with 

 the earth and the elements, his faculties unsheathed, 

 his mind plastic, his body toughened, his heart 

 light, his soul dilated; while those cramped and 

 distorted members in the calf and kid are the unfor- 

 tunate wretches doomed to carriages and cushions. 



I am not going to advocate the disuse of boots 

 and shoes, or the abandoning of the improved modes 

 of travel ; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can 

 on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the 

 shining angels second and accompany the man who 

 goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever look- 

 ing out for a chance to ride. 



When I see the discomforts that able-bodied 

 American men will put up with rather than go a 

 mile or half a mile on foot, the abuses they will 

 tolerate and encourage, crowding the street car on 

 a little fall in the temperature or the appearance of 

 an inch or two of snow, packing up to overflowing, 

 dangling to the straps, treading on each other's 

 toes, breathing each other's breaths, crushing the 

 women and children, hanging by tooth and nail to 

 a square inch of the platform, imperiling their limbs 

 and killing the horses, — I think the commonest 

 tramp in the street has good reason to felicitate 

 himself on his rare privilege of going afoot. Indeed, 

 a race that neglects or despises this primitive gift, 

 that fears the touch of the soil, that has no foot- 

 paths, no community of ownership in the land 



