58 
WALDEN. 
that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. 
After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute 
does not carry the most important messages; he is not 
an evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts 
and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever car¬ 
ried a peck of corn to mill. 
One says to me, “ I wonder that you do not lay up 
money; you love to travel; you might take the cars 
and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.” But 
I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swift¬ 
est traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my 
friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The 
distance is thirty miles ; the fare ninety cents. That 
is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages 
were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. 
Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; 
I have travelled at that rate by the week together. 
You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and 
arrive there some time to-morrow, or possibly this 
evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. 
Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working 
here the greater part of the day. And so, if the rail¬ 
road reached round the world, I think that I should 
keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and 
getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut 
your acquaintance altogether. 
Such is the universal law, which no man can ever 
outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may 
say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad 
round the world available to all mankind is equivalent 
to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have 
an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of 
joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length 
