THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 35 



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 bonmot, an unspoken jeu 

 d 9 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 coun- 

 try 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 because 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 loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it. 

 Then the tie of association is born; then spring 

 those invisible fibres and rootlets through which 

 character comes to smack of the soil, and which 



