48 TJBS 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 dis- 

 tance ; his walk is a sally, a bon-mot, an unspoken jeu 

 cT esprit ; the ground is his butt, his provocation ; it 

 furnishes him the resistance his body craves ; he re- 

 bounds 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 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 



