JC-NRLF 
 
JOYS OF THE ROAD 
 
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 
 Healthy, free, the world before me, 
 The long brown path before me leading wherever I 
 choose. 
 
 Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good- 
 fortune, 
 
 Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need 
 nothing^ 
 
 Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criti- 
 cisms, 
 
 Strong and content I travel the open road. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
Joys of the Road 
 
 A LITTLE ANTHOLOGY 
 
 IN PRAISE OF 
 
 WALKING 
 
 COMPILED 
 
 BY 
 W.R.B. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Browne's Bookstore 
 
 MDCCCCXI 
 
The Merrymount Press, Boston 
 
NOTE 
 
 THE Compiler begs to offer grateful 
 acknowledgment to those who have 
 permitted him to make use of the copy- 
 righted material in the following pages : 
 to Messrs. Hough ton Mifflin Company 
 for the extracts from Thoreau and Mr. 
 John Burroughs; to Messrs. Charles 
 Scribner's Sons for Robert Louis Ste- 
 venson's 'Walking Tours" and 
 "The Vagabond"; to Mr. Bliss Car- 
 man for ' ' The Joys of the Road ' ' ; and 
 to Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. for 
 the extract from William Morris's 
 poem, "The Message of the March 
 Wind." Mr. Arthur Symons's "On 
 the Roads" is taken, by permission, 
 from ' 4 The Poems of Arthur Symons, ' ' 
 published by Mr. William Heinemann, 
 London , and John Lane Co . , New York . 
 
 251195 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Joys of the Road. Bliss Carman 9 
 
 ON GOING A JOURNEY. WILLIAM 
 
 HAZLITT 14 
 
 The Vagabond. Robert Louis Stevenson 36 
 
 WALKING TOURS. ROBERT Louis 
 
 STEVENSON 38 
 
 Afoot. C. Fox Smith 54 
 
 WALKING. HENRY DAVID THOREAU 56 
 
 On the Roads. Arthur Symons 76 
 
 THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD. 
 
 JOHN BURROUGHS 77 
 
 Night and the Inn. William Morris IO2 
 
THE JOYS OF THE ROAD 
 
 BLISS CARMAN 
 
 e joys of theroad are chiefly these : 
 A crimson touch on the hard- wood trees; 
 
 A vagranfs morning wide and blue, 
 In early fall, when the wind walks, too; 
 
 A shadowy highway cool and brown, 
 Alluring up and enticing down 
 
 From rippled water to dappled swamp, 
 From purple glory to scarlet pomp; 
 
 The outward eye, the quiet will, 
 And the striding heart from hill to hill; 
 
 The tempter apple over the fence; 
 The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince; 
 
 The palish asters along the wood, 
 A lyric touch of the solitude ; 
 
 [9] 
 
BLISS CARMAN 
 
 An open hand, an easy shoe, 
 Andahopeto make the day go through^ 
 
 Another to sleep -with, and a third 
 To wake me up at the voice of a bird; 
 
 The resonant far-listening morn, 
 And the hoarse whisper of the corn; 
 
 The crickets mourning their comrades 
 
 lost, 
 In the night's retreat from the gathering 
 
 frost; 
 
 ( Or is it their slogan , plaintive and shrill, 
 As they beat on their corselets, valiant 
 still?} 
 
 A hunger Jit for the kings of the sea, 
 And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me ; 
 
 A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword, 
 And a jug of cider on the board; 
 
 [ 10] 
 
BLISS CARMAN 
 
 An idle noon, a bubbling spring, 
 The sea in the pine-tops murmuring; 
 
 A scrap of gossip at the ferry ; 
 
 A comrade neither glum nor merry, 
 
 Asking nothing, revealing naught, 
 But minting his words from a fund of 
 thought, 
 
 A keeper of silence eloquent, 
 Needy, yet royally "well content, 
 
 Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, 
 And full of the mellow juice of life, 
 
 A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid, 
 Never too bold, and never afraid, 
 
 Never heart-whole, never heart-sick, 
 ( These are the things I worship in Dick] 
 
 Nojidget and no reformer, just 
 A calm observer of ought and must, 
 
BLISS CARMAN 
 
 A lover of books, but a reader of man, 
 No cynic and no charlatan , 
 
 Who never defers and never demands, 
 But, smiling, takes the -world in his 
 hands, 
 
 Seeing it good as when God first saw 
 And gave it the weight of His will for law. 
 
 And the joy that is never won, 
 But follows and follows the journeying 
 sun, 
 
 By marsh and tide, by meadow and 
 
 stream, 
 A will-o? -the- wind, a light-o'* -dream, 
 
 Delusion afar, delight anear, 
 From morrow to morrow, from year to 
 year, 
 
 A jack-o } -lantern, afairyjlre, 
 A dare, a bliss, and a desire! 
 
BLISS CARMAN 
 
 The racy smell of the forest loam, 
 When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go 
 home; 
 
 (O leaves, leaves, I am one with you, 
 Of the mould and the sun and the wind 
 and the dew!} 
 
 The broad gold wake of the afternoon; 
 The silent fleck of the cold new moon; 
 
 The sound of the hollow sea^s release 
 From stormy tumult to starry peace; 
 
 With only another league to wend; 
 And two brown arms at the journey 's 
 end! 
 
 These are the joys of the open road 
 For him who travels without a load. 
 
ON GOING A JOURNEY 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 ONE of the pleasantest things in the 
 world is going a journey; but I like to 
 go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; 
 but out of doors, nature is company enough 
 for me. I am then never less alone than 
 when alone. 
 
 The fields his study, nature <was his book. 
 
 I cannot see the wit of walking and talking 
 at the same time. When I am in the coun- 
 try, I wish to vegetate like the country. I am 
 not for criticising hedgerows and black cat- 
 tle. I go out of town in order to forget the, 
 town and all that is in it. There are those 
 who for this purpose go to watering-places, 
 and carry the metropolis with them. I like 
 more elbow-room, and fewer encumbrances. 
 I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, 
 for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for 
 
 a friend in my retreat. 
 Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect 
 liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. 
 We go a journey chiefly to be free of all im- 
 pediments and of all inconveniences ; to leave 
 ourselves behind, much more to get rid of 
 others. It is because I want a little breathing- 
 space to muse on indifferent matters, where 
 Contemplation 
 
 May plume her feathers and let grow her wings 9 
 
 That in the various bustle of resort 
 
 Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired, 
 
 that I absent myself from the town for a 
 while, without feeling at a loss the moment 
 I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in 
 a post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange 
 good things with, and vary the same stale 
 topics over again, for once let me have a truce 
 with impertinence. Give me the clear blue 
 sky over my head, and the green turf beneath 
 my feet, a winding road before me, and a 
 three hours' march to dinner and then to 
 thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some 
 game bn these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, 
 I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yon- 
 
 C'S] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 der rolling cloud I plunge into my past being, 
 and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian 
 plunges headlong into the wave that wafts 
 him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten 
 things, like "sunken wrack and sumless treas- 
 uries," burst upon my eager sight, and I begin 
 to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead 
 of an awkward silence, broken by attempts 
 at wit or dull common-places, mine is that 
 undisturbed silence of the heart which alone 
 is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, al- 
 literations, antitheses, argument, and analy- 
 sis better than I do; but I sometimes had 
 rather be without them. "Leave, oh, leave 
 me to my repose! " I have just now other 
 business in hand, which would seem idle to 
 you, but is with me "very stuff of the con- 
 science." Is not this wild rose sweet with- 
 out a comment ? Does not this daisy leap to 
 my heart set in its coat of emerald? Yet if 
 I were to explain to you the circumstance 
 that has so endeared it to me, you would 
 only smile. Had I not better then \keep it 
 to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, 
 from here to yonder craggy point, and from 
 
 [ 16] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 thence onward to the far-distant horizon ? 
 I should be but bad company all that way, 
 and therefore prefer being alone. I have 
 heard it said that you may, when the moody 
 fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, 
 and indulge your reveries. But this looks 
 like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, 
 and you are thinking all the time that you 
 ought to rejoin your party. "Out upon-such 
 half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be 
 either entirely to myself, or entirely at the 
 disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to 
 walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. 
 . I was pleased with an observation of Mr. 
 Cobbett's, that "he thought it a bad French 
 custom to drink our wine with our meals, 
 and that an Englishman ought to do only 
 one thing at a time." So I cannot talk and 
 think, or indulge in melancholy musing and 
 lively conversation by fits and starts. "Let 
 me have a companion of my way," says 
 Sterne, "were it but to remark how the 
 shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It 
 is beautifully said; but, in my opinion, this 
 continual comparing of notes interferes with 
 
 [-7] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 the involuntary impression of things upon 
 the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you 
 only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb 
 show, it is insipid; if you have to explain 
 it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You 
 cannot read the book of nature without be- 
 ing perpetually put to the trouble of trans- 
 lating it for the benefit of others. I am for 
 the synthetical method on a journey, in pre- 
 ference to the analytical. I am content to 
 lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine 
 and anatomise them afterwards. I want to 
 see my vague notions float like the down 
 of the thistle before the breeze, and not to 
 have them entangled in the briars and thorns 
 of controversy. For once, I like to have it 
 all my own way; and this is impossible 
 unless you are alone, or in- such company as 
 I do not covet. I have no objection to argue 
 a point with any one for twenty miles of 
 measured road, but not for pleasure5If you 
 remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the 
 road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no 
 smell. If you point to a distant object, per- 
 haps he is short-sighted, and has to take out 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 his glass to look at it. There is a feeling 
 I in the air, a tone in the colour of a cloud, 
 which hits your fancy, but the effect of 
 which you are unable to account for. There 
 is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving 
 after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues 
 you on the way, and in the end probably pro- 
 duces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with 
 myself, and take all my own conclusions 
 for granted till I find it necessary to defend 
 them against objections. It is not merely 
 that you may not be of accord on the objects 
 and circumstances that present themselves 
 before you these may recall a number of 
 objects, and lead to associations too delicate 
 and refined to be possibly communicated 
 to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and 
 sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I 
 can escape from the throng to do so. To 
 give way to our feelings before company 
 seems extravagance or affectation ; and, on 
 the other hand, to have to unravel this mys- 
 tery of our being at every turn, and to make 
 others take an equal interest in it (otherwise 
 the end is not answered), is a task to which 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 few are competent. We must "give it an un- 
 derstanding, but no tongue." My old friend 
 Coleridge, however, could do both. He could 
 go on in the most delightful explanatory 
 way over hill and dale, a summer's day, and 
 convert a landscape into a didactic poem or 
 a Pindaric ode. " He talked far above sing- 
 ing." If I could so clothe my ideas in sound- 
 ing and flowing words, I might perhaps wish 
 to have some one with me to admire the 
 swelling theme; or I could be more content, 
 were it possible for me still to hear his echo- 
 ing voice in the woods of All-Foxden.*They 
 had u that fine madness in them which our 
 first poets had"; and if they could have been 
 caught by some rare instrument, would have 
 breathed such strains as the following: 
 
 Here be woods as green 
 As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
 As when smooth Zephyr us plays on the fleet 
 face of the curled stream, 'with flow rs as many 
 As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ; 
 Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, 
 
 * Near Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire, where the author of 
 this Essay visited Coleridge in 1798. He was there again 
 in 1803. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 Arbours overgrown with woodbine, carves and dells j 
 Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing, 
 Or gather rushes to make many a ring 
 For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales oj ' lo<ve, 
 How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 
 First saw the boy Endymion,from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
 How she conveyed him softly in a sleep , 
 His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
 Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
 To kiss her sweetest.* 
 
 Had I words and images at command like 
 these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts 
 that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the 
 evening clouds: but at the sight of nature 
 my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up 
 its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make 
 nothing out on the spot : I must have time to 
 collect myself. 
 
 In general, a good thing spoils out-of- 
 door prospects: it should be reserved for 
 Table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, I take 
 it, the worst company in the world out of 
 doors; because he is the best within. I grant 
 
 * Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, i. 3 (Dyce's Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, ii. 38, 39). 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 there is one subject on which it is pleasant 
 to talk on a journey, and that is, what one 
 shall have for supper when we get to our 
 inn at night. The open air improves this 
 sort of conversation or friendly altercation, 
 by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every 
 mile of the road heightens the flavour of 
 the viands we expect at the end of it. How 
 fine it is to enter some old town, walled and 
 turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, 
 or to come to some straggling village, with 
 the lights streaming through the surround- 
 ing gloom; and then, after inquiring for the 
 best entertainment that the place affords, 
 to "take one's ease at one's inn"! These 
 eventful moments in our lives' history are 
 too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt hap- 
 piness to be frittered and dribbled away in 
 imperfect sympathy. I wc/uld have them all 
 to myself, and drain them to the last drop: 
 they will do to talk of or to write about 
 afterwards. What a delicate speculation it 
 is, after drinking whole goblets of tea 
 
 The cups that cheer, but not inebriate 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, 
 to sit considering what we shall have for 
 supper eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smoth- 
 ered in onions, or an excellent veal cutlet! 
 Sancho in such a situation once fixed upon 
 cow-heel; and his choice, though he could 
 not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in 
 the intervals of pictured scenery and Shan- 
 dean contemplation, to catch the prepara- 
 tion and the stir in the kitchen [getting 
 ready for the gentleman in the parlour], 
 Procul, procul este profani! These hours 
 are sacred to silence and to musing, to be 
 treasured up in the memory, and to feed the 
 source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would 
 not waste them in idle talk; or if I must 
 have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, 
 I would rather it were by a stranger than a 
 friend. A stranger takes his hue and char- 
 acter from the time and place; he is a part 
 of the furniture and costume of an inn. If 
 he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding 
 of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not 
 even try to sympathise with him, and he 
 breaks no squares. [How I love to see the 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 camps of the gypsies, and to sigh my soul 
 into that sort of life. If I express this feel- 
 ing to another, he may qualify and spoil it 
 with some objection.] I associate nothing 
 with my travelling companion but present 
 objects and passing events. In his ignorance 
 of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget 
 myself. But a friend reminds one of other 
 things, rips up old grievances, and destroys 
 the abstraction of the scene. He comes in 
 ungraciously between us and our imaginary 
 character. Something is dropped in the course 
 of conversation that gives a hint of your pro- 
 fession and pursuits; or from having some 
 one with you that knows the less sublime 
 portions of your history, it seems that other 
 people do. You are no longer a citizen of 
 the world; but your "unhoused free con- 
 dition is put into circumscription and con- 
 fine." The incognito of an inn is one of its 
 striking privileges "lord of one's self, un- 
 cumber'd with a name." Oh! it is great to 
 shake off the trammels of the world and of 
 public opinion to lose our importunate, 
 tormenting, everlasting personal identity in 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 the elements of nature, and become the 
 creature of the moment, clear of all ties to 
 hold to the universe only by a dish of sweet- 
 breads, and to owe nothing but the score 
 of the evening and no longer seeking for 
 applause and meeting with contempt, to be 
 known by no other title than the Gentleman 
 in the parlour! One may take one's choice 
 of all characters in this romantic state of 
 uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and 
 become indefinitely respectable and nega- 
 tively right worshipful. We baffle prejudice 
 and disappoint conjecture; and from being 
 so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity 
 and wonder even to ourselves. We are no 
 more those hackneyed common-places that 
 we appear in the world; an inn restores us 
 to the level of nature, and quits scores with 
 society ! I have certainly spent some envi- 
 able hours at inns sometimes when I have 
 been left entirely to myself, and have tried 
 to solve some metaphysical problem, as once 
 at Witham Common, where I found out 
 the proof that likeness is not a case of the 
 association of ideas at other times, when 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 there have been pictures in the room, as-at 
 St. Neot's (I think it was), where I first met 
 with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons, 
 into which I entered at once, and at a little 
 inn on the borders of Wales, where there 
 happened to be hanging some of WestalPs 
 drawings, which I compared triumphantly 
 (for a theory that I had, not for the admired 
 artist) with the figure of a girl who had fer- 
 ried me over the Severn, standing up in the 
 boat between me and the twilight at other 
 times I might mention luxuriating in books, 
 with a peculiar interest in this way, as I 
 remember sitting up half the night to read 
 Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an 
 inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in 
 the rain all day; and at the same place I 
 got through two volumes of Madame d'Ar- 
 blay's Camilla. It was on the loth of April 
 1798 that I sat down to a volume of the 
 New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over 
 a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The 
 letter I chose was that in which St. Preux 
 describes his feelings as he first caught a 
 glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the 
 
 [*] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with 
 me as a bon bouche to crown the evening 
 with. It was my birthday, and I had for the 
 first time come from a place in the neigh- 
 bourhood to visit this delightful spot. The 
 road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk 
 and Wrexham ; and on passing a certain 
 point you come all at once upon the valley, 
 which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, 
 barren hills rising in majestic state on either 
 side, with "green upland swells that echo 
 to the bleat of flocks" below, and the river 
 Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst 
 of them. The valley at this time "glittered 
 green with sunny showers," and a budding 
 ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the 
 chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was 
 to walk along the high road that overlooks the 
 delicious prospect, repeating the lines which 
 I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's po- 
 ems ! But besides the prospect which opened 
 beneath my feet, another also opened to my 
 inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which 
 were written, in letters large as Hope could 
 make them, these four words, LIBERTY, 
 
 ['7] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE; which have since 
 faded into the light of common day, or mock 
 
 my idle gaze. 
 
 
 The beautiful is vanished, and returns not. 
 
 Still I would return some time or other to 
 this enchanted spot; but I would return to it 
 alone. What other self could I find to share 
 that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, 
 the fragments of which I could hardly con- 
 jure up to myself, so much have they been 
 broken and defaced! I could stand on some 
 tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years 
 that separates me from what I then was. I 
 was at that time going shortly to visit the 
 poet whom I have above named. Where is 
 he now? Not only I myself have changed; 
 the world, which was then new to me, has 
 become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn 
 to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, 
 in youth and gladness as thou then wert; 
 and thou shalt always be to me the river of 
 Paradise, where I will drink of the waters 
 of life freely ! 
 
 There is hardly anything that shows, the 
 
 [*' 1 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 short-sightedness or capriciousness of the 
 imagination more than travelling does. With 
 change of place we change our ideas; nay, 
 our opinions and feelings. We can by an 
 effort indeed transport ourselves to old and 
 long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of 
 the mind revives again ; but we forget those 
 that we have just left. It seems that we can 
 think but of one place at a time. The can- 
 vas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, 
 and if we paint one set of objects upon it, 
 they immediately efface every other. We can- 
 not enlarge our conceptions, we only shift 
 our point of view. The landscape bares its 
 bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill 
 of it, and seem as if we could form no other 
 image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, 
 and think no more of it: the horizon that 
 shuts it from our sight also blots it from our 
 memory like a dream. In travelling through 
 a wild barren country I can form no idea of 
 a woody and cultivated one. It appears to 
 me that all the world must be barren, like 
 what I see of it. In the country we forget 
 the town, and in town we despise the coun- 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 try. " Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir Fopling 
 Flutter, "all is a desert." All that part of the 
 map that we do not see before us is a blank. 
 The world in our conceit of it is not much 
 bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect 
 expanded into another, county joined to 
 county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, 
 making an image voluminous and vast; 
 the mind can form no larger idea of space 
 than the eye can take in at a single glance. 
 The rest is a name written in a map, a cal- 
 culation of arithmetic. For instance, what is 
 the true signification of that immense mass 
 of territory and population known by the 
 name of China to us? An inch of pasteboard 
 on a wooden globe, of no more account than 
 a China orange ! Things near us are seen of 
 the size of life : things at a distance are dimin- 
 ished to the size of the understanding. We 
 measure the universe by ourselves, and even 
 comprehend the texture of our own being 
 only piecemeal. In this way, however, we 
 remember an infinity of things and places. 
 The mind is like a mechanical instrument 
 that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must 
 
 [so] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 play them in succession. One idea recalls 
 another, but it at the same time excludes all 
 others. In trying to renew old recollections, 
 we cannot as it were unfold the whole web 
 of our existence; we must pick out the single 
 threads. So in coming to a place where we 
 have formerly lived, and with which we have 
 intimate associations, every one must have 
 found that the feeling grows more vivid the 
 nearer we approach the spot, from the mere 
 anticipation of the actual impression: we 
 remember circumstances, feelings, persons, 
 faces, names, that we had not thought of for 
 years ; but for the time all the rest of the 
 world is forgotten ! To return to the que$- 
 tion I have quitted above. 
 
 I have no objection to go to see ruins, 
 aqueducts, pictures, in company with a 
 friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for 
 the former reason reversed. They are intel- 
 ligible matters, and will bear talking about. 
 The sentiment here is not tacit, but com- 
 municable and overt. Salisbury Plain- is bar- 
 ren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a 
 discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and phi- 
 
 [ 3- ] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 losophical. In setting out on a party of plea- 
 sure, the first consideration always is where 
 we shall go to: in taking a solitary ramble, 
 the question is what we shall meet with by 
 the way. "The mind is its own place"; nor 
 are we anxious to arrive at the end of our 
 journey. I can myself do the honours indif- 
 ferently well to works of art and curiosity. 
 I once took a party to Oxford with no mean 
 eclat showed them that seat of the Muses 
 at a distance, 
 
 With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn d 
 
 descanted on the learned air that breathes 
 from the grassy quadrangles and stone walls 
 of halls and colleges was at home in the 
 Bodleian; and at Blenheim quite superseded 
 the powdered Cicerone that attended us, and 
 that pointed in vain with his wand to com- 
 mon-place beauties in matchless pictures. As 
 another exception to the above reasoning, 
 I should not feel confident in venturing on 
 a journey in a foreign country without a com- 
 panion. I should want at intervals to hear 
 the sound of my own language. There is 
 
 t 3] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an 
 Englishman to foreign manners and notions 
 that requires the assistance of social sym- 
 pathy to carry it off. As the distance from 
 home increases, this relief, which was at first 
 a luxury, becomes a passion and an appe- 
 tite. A person would almost feel stifled to 
 find himself in the deserts of Arabia with- 
 out friends and countrymen : there must be 
 allowed to be something in the view of 
 Athens or old Rome that claims the utter- 
 ance of speech; and I own that the Pyra- 
 mids are too mighty for any single contem- 
 plation. In such situations, so opposite to 
 all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems 
 a species by one's-self, a limb torn off from 
 society, unless one can meet with instant 
 fellowship and support. Yet I did not feel 
 this want or craving very pressing once, 
 when I first set my foot on the laughing 
 shores of France. Calais was peopled with 
 novelty and delight. The confused, busy 
 murmur of the place was like oil and wine 
 poured into my ears; nor did the manners' 
 hymn, which was sung from the top of an 
 
 [33] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun 
 went down, send an alien sound into my 
 soul. I only breathed the air of general hu- 
 manity. I walked over u the vine-covered 
 hills and gay regions of France," erect and 
 satisfied; for the image of man was not cast 
 down and chained to the foot of arbitrary 
 thrones : I was at no loss for language, for 
 that of all the great schools of painting was 
 open to me. The whole is vanished like a 
 shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all 
 are fled : nothing remains but the Bourbons 
 and the French people!" There is undoubt- 
 edly a sensation in travelling into foreign 
 parts that is to be had nowhere else; but 
 it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. 
 It is too remote from our habitual associa- 
 tions to be a common topic of discourse or 
 reference, and, like a dream or another state 
 of existence, does not piece into our daily 
 modes of life. It is an animated but a mo- 
 mentary hallucination. It demands an effort 
 to exchange our actual for our ideal identity; 
 and to feel the pulse of our old transports 
 revive very keenly, we must "jump " all our 
 
 [34] 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 present comforts and connections. Our ro- 
 mantic and itinerant character is not to be 
 domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how 
 little foreign travel added to the facilities of 
 conversation in those who had been abroad. 
 In fact, the time we have spent there is 
 both delightful and in one sense instructive; 
 but it appeals to be cut out of our substan- 
 tial, downright existence, and never to join 
 kindly on to it. We are not the same, but 
 another, and perhaps more enviable individ- 
 ual, all the time we are out of our own coun- 
 try. We are lost to ourselves, as well as our 
 friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings : 
 
 Out of my country and myself I go. 
 
 Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, 
 do well to absent themselves for a while 
 from the ties and objects that recall them; 
 but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny 
 in the place that gave us birth. I should on 
 this account like well enough to spend the 
 whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I 
 could anywhere borrow another life to spend 
 afterwards at home! 
 
 [35] 
 
THE VAGABOND 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 me the life I love, 
 
 Let the lave go by me, 
 Give the jolly heaven above 
 
 And the byway nigh me. 
 Bed in the bush with stars to see, 
 
 Bread I dip in the river 
 There's the life for a man like me, 
 
 There** s the life for ever. 
 
 Let the blow fall soon or late, 
 
 Let what will be o'er me; 
 Give the face of earth around 
 
 And the road before me. 
 Wealth I seek not, hope nor love, 
 
 Nor a friend to know me; 
 All I seek, the heaven above 
 
 And the road below me. 
 
 [36] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 Or let autumn fall on me 
 
 Where afield I linger, 
 Silencing the bird on tree, 
 
 Siting the blue finger. 
 White as meal the frosty field 
 
 Warm the fireside haven 
 Not to autumn will I yield, 
 
 Not to winter even! 
 
 Let the blow fall soon or late, 
 
 Let what will be o^er me; 
 Give the face of earth around, 
 
 And the road before me. 
 Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, 
 
 Nor a friend to know me; 
 All I ask, the heaven above 
 
 And the road below me. 
 
 [37] 
 
WALKING TOURS 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 IT must not be imagined that a walking 
 tour, as some would have us fancy, is 
 merely a better or worse way of seeing the 
 country. There are many ways of seeing 
 landscape quite as good; and none more 
 vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than 
 from a railway train. But landscape on a 
 walking tour is quite accessory. He who is 
 indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage 
 in quest of the picturesque, but of certain 
 jolly humours of the hope and spirit with 
 which the march begins at morning, and the 
 peace and spiritual repletion of the evening's 
 rest. He cannot tell whether he puts his knap- 
 sack on, or takes it off, with more delight. 
 The excitement of the departure puts him 
 in key for that of the arrival. Whatever he 
 does is not only a reward in itself, but will 
 be further rewarded in the sequel; and so 
 pleasure leads on to pleasure in an endless 
 chain. It is this that so few can understand; 
 they will either be always lounging or always 
 
 [38] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 at five miles an hour; they do not play off 
 the one against the other, prepare all day for 
 the evening, and all evening for the next 
 day. And, above all, it is here that your over- 
 walker fails of comprehension. His heart 
 rises against those who drink their curacoa 
 in liqueur glasses, when he himself can swill 
 it in a brown John. He will not believe that 
 the flavour is more delicate in the smaller 
 dose. He will not believe that to walk this 
 unconscionable distance is merely to stupefy 
 and brutalise himself, and come to his inn, 
 at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, 
 and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. 
 Not for him the mild luminous evening of 
 the temperate walker! He has nothing left 
 of man but a physical need for bedtime and 
 a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he 
 be a smoker, will be savourless and disen- 
 chanted. It is the fate of such an one to take 
 twice as much trouble as is needed to obtain 
 happiness, and miss the happiness in the 
 end; he is the man of the proverb, in short, 
 who goes farther and fares worse. 
 
 Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 tour should be gone upon alone. If you go 
 in a company, or even in pairs, it is no longer 
 a walking tour in anything but name; it is 
 something else, and more in the nature of 
 a picnic. A walking tour should be gone upon 
 alone, because freedom is of the essence; 
 because you should be able to stop and go 
 on, and follow this way or that, as the freak 
 takes you; and because you must have your 
 own pace, and neither trot alongside a cham- 
 pion walker, nor mince in time with a girl. 
 And then you must be open to all impres- 
 sions, and let your thoughts take colour from 
 what you see. You should be as a pipe for 
 any wind to play upon. " I cannot see the 
 wit," says Hazlitt, "of walking and talking 
 at the same time. When I am in the country 
 I wish to vegetate like the country," which 
 is the gist of all that can be said upon the 
 matter. There should be no cackle of voices 
 at your elbow,to jar on the meditative silence 
 of the morning. And so long as a man is 
 reasoning he cannot surrender himself to 
 that fine intoxication that comes of much 
 motion in the open air, that begins in a sort 
 
 [40] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 of a dazzle and sluggishness of the brain, and 
 ends in a peace that passes comprehension. 
 During the first day or so of any tour there 
 are moments of bitterness, when the travel- 
 ler feels more than coldly towards his knap- 
 sack, when he is half in a mind to throw it 
 bodily over the hedge, and, like Christian 
 on a similar occasion, "give three leaps and 
 go on singing." And yet it soon acquires a 
 property of easiness. It becomes magnetic; 
 the spirit of the journey enters into it. And no 
 sooner have you passed the straps over your 
 shoulder than the lees of sleep are cleared 
 from you, you pull yourself together with a 
 shake, and fall at once into your stride. And 
 surely, of all possible moods, this, in which 
 a man takes the road, is the best. Of course, 
 if he will keep thinking of his anxieties, if 
 he will open the merchant Abudah's chest 
 and walk arm-in-arm with the hag why, 
 wherever he is, and whether he walk fast or 
 slow, the chances are that he will not be 
 happy. And so much the more shame to him- 
 self! There are perhaps thirty men setting 
 forth at that same hour, and I would lay a 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 large wager there is not another dull face 
 among the thirty. It would be a fine thing 
 to follow, in a coat of darkness, one after 
 another of these wayfarers, some summer 
 morning, for the first few miles upon the 
 road. This one, who walks fast, with a keen 
 look in his eyes, is all concentrated in his 
 own mind; he is up at his loom, weaving 
 and weaving, to set the landscape to words. 
 This one peers about, as he goes, among 
 the grasses ; he waits by the canal to watch 
 the dragon-flies; he leans on the gate of the 
 pasture, and cannot look enough upon the 
 complacent kine. And here comes another, 
 talking, laughing, and gesticulating to him- 
 self. His face changes from time to time, as 
 indignation flashes from his eyes or anger 
 clouds his forehead. He is composing articles, 
 delivering orations, and conducting the most 
 impassioned interviews, by the way. A little 
 farther on, and it is as like as not he will be- 
 gin to sing. And well for him, supposing him 
 to be no great master in that art, if he stum- 
 ble across no stolid peasant at a corner; for 
 on such an occasion, I scarcely know which 
 
 [4*] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 is the more troubled, or whether it is worse 
 to suffer the confusion of your troubadour or 
 the unfeigned alarm of your clown. A seden- 
 tary population, accustomed, besides, to the 
 strange mechanical bearing of the common 
 tramp, can in no wise explain to itself the 
 gaiety of these passers-by. I knew one man 
 who was arrested as a runaway lunatic, be- 
 cause, although a full-grown person with a 
 red beard, he skipped as he went like a child. 
 And you would be astonished if I were to 
 tell you all the grave and learned heads who 
 have confessed to me that, when on walk- 
 ing tours, they sang and sang very ill 
 and had a pair of red ears when, as described 
 above, the inauspicious peasant plumped into 
 their arms from round a corner. And here, 
 lest you should think I am exaggerating, is 
 Hazlitt's own confession, from his essay 
 "On Going a Journey," which is so good that 
 there should be a tax levied on all who have 
 not read it: 
 
 "Give me the clear blue sky over my 
 head," says he, " and the green turf beneath 
 my feet, a winding road before me, and a 
 
 [43] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 three hours' march to dinner and then to 
 thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some 
 game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, 
 I leap, I sing for joy." 
 
 Bravo ! After that adventure of my friend 
 with the policeman, you would not have 
 cared, would you, to publish that in the first 
 person ? But we have no bravery nowadays, 
 and, even in books, must all pretend to be 
 as dull and foolish as our neighbours. It was 
 not so with Hazlitt. And notice how learned 
 he is (as, indeed, throughout the essay) in 
 the theory of walking tours. He is none of 
 your athletic men in purple stockings, who 
 walk their fifty miles a day: three hours' 
 march is his ideal. And then he must have 
 a winding road, the epicure! 
 
 Yet there is one thing I object to in these 
 words of his, one thing in the great master's 
 practice that seems to me not wholly wise. 
 I do not approve of that leaping and run- 
 ning. Both of these hurry the respiration; 
 they both shake up the brain out of its glori- 
 ous open-air confusion ; and they both break 
 the pace. Uneven walking is not so agree- 
 
 [44] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 able to the body, and it distracts and irri- 
 tates the mind. Whereas, when once you 
 have fallen into an equable stride, it requires 
 no conscious thought from you to keep it 
 up, and yet it prevents you from thinking 
 earnestly of anything else. Like knitting, like 
 the work of a copying clerk, it gradually 
 neutralises and sets to sleep the serious ac- 
 tivity of the mind. We can think of this or 
 that,lightly and laughingly, as a child thinks, 
 or as we think in a morning doze; we can 
 make puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle 
 in a thousand ways with words and rhymes; 
 but when it comes to honest work, when 
 we come to gather ourselves together for an 
 effort, we may sound the trumpet as loud 
 and long as we please ; the great barons of 
 the mind will not rally to the standard, but 
 sit, each one, at home, warming his hands 
 over his own fire, and brooding on his own 
 private thought! 
 
 In the course of a day's walk, you see, 
 there is much variance in the mood. From 
 the exhilaration of the start, to the happy 
 phlegm of the arrival, the change is certainly 
 
 [45] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 great. As the day goes on, the traveller moves 
 from the one extreme end towards the other. 
 He becomes more and more incorporated 
 with the material landscape, and the open- 
 air drunkenness grows upon him with great 
 strides, until he posts along the road, and 
 sees everything about him, as in a cheerful 
 dream. The first is certainly brighter, but 
 the second stage is the more peaceful. A 
 man does not make so many articles towards 
 the end, nor does he laugh aloud ; but the 
 purely animal pleasures, the sense of physi- 
 cal well-being, the delight of every inhala- 
 tion, of every time the muscles tighten down 
 the thigh, console him for the absence of 
 the others, and bring him to his destination 
 still content. 
 
 Nor must I forget to say a word on biv- 
 ouacs. You come to a milestone on a hill, 
 or some place where deep ways meet under 
 trees; and off goes the knapsack, and down 
 you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You 
 sink into yourself, and the birds come round 
 and look at you ; and your smoke dissipates 
 upon the afternoon under the blue dome of 
 
 [46] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 heaven ; and the sun lies warm upon your 
 feet, and the cool air visits your neck and 
 turns aside your open shirt. If you are not 
 happy, you must have an evil conscience. 
 You may dally as long as you like by the 
 roadside. It is almost as if the millennium 
 were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks 
 and watches over the house-top, and remem- 
 ber time and seasons no more. Not to keep 
 hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, 
 to live for ever. You have no idea, unless 
 you have tried it, how endlessly long is a 
 summer's day that you measure out only 
 by hunger, and bring to an end only when 
 you are drowsy. I know a village where 
 there are hardly any clocks, where no one 
 knows more of the days of the week than 
 by a sort of instinct for the/2/* on Sundays, 
 and where only one person can tell you 
 the day of the month, and she is generally 
 wrong ; and if people were aware how slow 
 Time journeyed in that village, and what 
 armfuls of spare hours he gives, over and 
 above the bargain,* to its wise inhabitants, 
 I believe there would be a stampede out of 
 
 [47] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 London, Liverpool, Paris, and a variety of 
 large towns, where the clocks lose their 
 heads, and shake the hours out each one 
 faster than the other, as though they were 
 all in a wager. And all these foolish pilgrims 
 would each bring his own misery along with 
 him, in a watch-pocket ! It is to be noticed 
 there were no clocks and watches in the 
 much-vaunted days before the flood. It fol- 
 lows, of course, there were no appointments, 
 and punctuality was not yet thought upon.) 
 "Though ye take from a covetous man all 
 his treasure," says Milton, u he has yet one 
 jewel left ; ye cannot deprive him of his cov- 
 etousness." And so I would say of a modern 
 man of business, you may do what you will 
 for him, put him in Eden, give him the elixir 
 of life he has still a flaw at heart, he still 
 has his business habits. Now, there is no 
 time when business habits are more miti- 
 gated than on a walking tour. And so dur- 
 ing these halts, as I say, you will feel almost 
 free. 
 
 But it is at night, and after dinner, that the 
 best hour comes. There are no such pipes 
 
 [48] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 to be smoked as those that follow a good 
 day's march ; the flavour of the tobacco is 
 a thing to be remembered, it is so dry and 
 aromatic, so full and so fine. If you wind up 
 the evening with grog, you will own there 
 was never such grog ; at every sip a jocund 
 tranquillity spreads about your limbs, and 
 sits easily in your heart. If you read a book 
 and you will never do so save by fits and 
 starts- you find the language strangely racy 
 and harmonious; words take a new meaning; 
 single sentences possess the ear for half an 
 hour together; and the writer endears himself 
 to you, at every page, by the nicest coinci- 
 dence of sentiment. It seems as if it were a 
 book you had written yourself in a dream. To 
 all we have read on such occasions we look 
 back with special favour. "It was on the 
 loth of April, 1798," says Hazlitt, with 
 amorous precision, "that I sat down to a 
 volume of the new c Heloise,' at the Inn 
 at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a 
 cold chicken." I should wish to quote more, 
 for though we are mighty fine fellows nowa- 
 days, we cannot write like Hazlitt. And, 
 
 [49] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 talking of that, a volume of Hazlitt's essays 
 would be a capital pocket-book on such 
 a journey; so would a volume of Heine's 
 songs; and for "Tristram Shandy" I can 
 pledge a fair experience. 
 
 If the evening be fine and warm, there is 
 nothing better in life than to lounge before 
 the inn door in the sunset, or lean over the 
 parapet of the bridge, to watch the weeds 
 and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever, that 
 you taste Joviality to the full significance 
 of that audacious word. Your muscles are 
 so agreeably slack, you feel so clean and so 
 strong and so idle, that whether you move 
 or sit still, whatever you do is done with 
 pride and a kingly sort of pleasure. You fall 
 in talk with any one, wise or foolish, drunk 
 or sober. And it seems as if a hot walk 
 purged you, more than of anything else, of 
 all narrowness and pride, and left curiosity to 
 play its part freely, as in a child or a man of 
 science. You lay aside all your own hobbies, 
 to watch provincial humours develop them- 
 selves before you, now as a laughable farce, 
 and now grave and beautiful like an old tale. 
 
 [50] 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 Or perhaps you are left to your own com- 
 pany for the night, and surly weather im- 
 prisons you by the fire. You may remember 
 how Burns, numbering past pleasures, dwells 
 upon the hours when he has been "happy 
 thinking." It is a phrase that may well per- 
 plex a poor modern, girt about on every side 
 by clocks and chimes, and haunted, even at 
 night, by flaming dial-plates. For we are all 
 so busy, and have so many far-off projects 
 to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into 
 solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, 
 that we can find no time for pleasure trips 
 into the Land of Thought and among the 
 Hills of Vanity. Changed times, indeed, 
 when we must sit all night, beside the fire, 
 with folded hands; and a changed world 
 for most of us, when we find we can pass 
 the hours without discontent, and be happy 
 thinking. We are in such haste to be doing, 
 to be writing, to be gathering gear, to make 
 our voice audible a moment in the derisive 
 silence of eternity, that we forget that one 
 thing, of which these are but the parts 
 namely, to live. We fall in love, we drink 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 hard, we run to and fro upon the earth like 
 frightened sheep. And now you are to ask 
 yourself if, when all is done, you would 
 not have been better to sit by the fire at 
 home, and be happy thinking. To sit still 
 and contemplate, to remember the faces 
 of women without desire, to be pleased by 
 the great deeds of men without envy, to be 
 every thing and everywhere in sympathy, and 
 yet content to remain where and what you 
 are is not this to know both wisdom and 
 virtue, and to dwell with happiness ? After 
 all, it is not they who carry flags, but they 
 who look upon it from a private chamber, 
 who have the fun of the procession. And 
 once you are at that, you are in the very 
 humour of all social heresy. It is no time for 
 shuffling, or for big empty words. If you 
 ask yourself what you mean by fame, riches, 
 or learning, the answer is far to seek ; and 
 you go back into that kingdom of light ima- 
 ginations, which seem so vain in the eyes 
 of Philistines perspiring after wealth, and 
 so momentous to those who are stricken 
 with the disproportions of the world, and, in 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 the face of the gigantic stars, cannot stop to 
 split differences between two degrees of the 
 infinitesimally small, such as a tobacco pipe 
 or the Roman Empire, a million of money 
 or a fiddlestick's end. 
 
 You lean from the window, your last pipe 
 reeking whitely into the darkness, your body 
 full of delicious pains, your mind enthroned 
 in the seventh circle of content ; when sud- 
 denly the mood changes, the weather-cock 
 goes about, and you ask yourself one ques- 
 tion more: whether, for the interval, you 
 have been the wisest philosopher or the most 
 egregious of donkeys? Human experience 
 is not yet able to reply ; but at least you 
 have had a fine moment, and looked down 
 upon all the kingdoms of the earth. And 
 whether it was wise or foolish, to-morrow's 
 travel will carry you, body and mind, into 
 some different parish of the infinite. 
 
 [53] 
 
AFOOT 
 
 C. FOX SMITH 
 
 is the road ^twixt town and town 
 that runs, 
 
 Travelled by many a lordly cavalcade -, 
 
 With trappings gay , and rich caparisons, 
 
 Jester and squire, and laughing knight 
 
 and maid: 
 With gallant clash and stir they go their 
 
 way: 
 I trudge afoot thro* all the drouth of day. 
 
 For me, the misty meadows fresh with 
 
 mom, 
 
 The tramp thro'* noontide heat to even- 
 ing gray, 
 
 The far- seen smoke from the day^s goal 
 
 upborne, 
 
 The halt, the friendly greeting by the 
 way, 
 
 The distant hill behind Jar hill descried, 
 
 The road by day, the rest at eventide. 
 
 [54] 
 
C. FOX SMITH 
 
 / know each wayside wood, each moor- 
 land brown, 
 
 Each hidden byway and reposeful 
 nook, 
 
 Where I may linger when the sun goes 
 
 down, 
 
 Dipping tired feet in some cool flow- 
 ing brook; 
 
 I know the free hill and the glooming 
 glen, 
 
 And kindly flres, and humble homes 
 of men. 
 
 [55] 
 
WALKING 
 
 HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 I HAVE met with but one or two per- 
 sons in the course of my life who un- 
 derstood the art of Walking, that is, of tak- 
 ing walks, who had a genius, so to speak, 
 for sauntering: which word is beautifully 
 derived " from idle people who roved about 
 the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked 
 charity, under pretence of going a la Sainte 
 Terre" to the Holy Land, till the children 
 exclaimed, "There goes a Saint e-Terrer" a 
 Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never 
 go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they 
 pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vaga- 
 bonds ; but they who do go there are saun- 
 terers in the good sense, such as I mean. 
 Some, however, would derive the word from 
 sans terre, without land or a home, which, 
 therefore, in the good sense, will mean, hav- 
 ing no particular home, but equally at home 
 everywhere. For this is the secret of suc- 
 cessful sauntering. He who sits still in a 
 house all the time may be the greatest va- 
 
 [56] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 grant of all; but the saunterer, in the good 
 sense, is no more vagrant than the mean- 
 dering river, which is all the while sedu- 
 lously seeking the shortest course to the sea. 
 But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the 
 most probable derivation. For every walk is 
 a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter 
 the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer 
 this Holy Land from the hands of the In- 
 fidels. 
 
 It is true, we are but faint-hearted cru- 
 saders, even the walkers, nowadays, who 
 undertake no persevering, never-ending en- 
 terprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and 
 come round again at evening to the old 
 hearth-side from which we set out. Half the 
 walk is but retracing our steps. We should 
 go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, 
 in the spirit of undying adventure, never 
 to return, prepared to send back our em- 
 balmed hearts only as relics to our desolate 
 kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father 
 and mother, and brother and sister, and wife 
 and child and friends, and never see them 
 again, if you have paid your debts, and 
 
 [57] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 made your will, and settled all your affairs, 
 and are a free man, then you are ready for 
 a walk. 
 
 To come down to my own experience, 
 my companion and I, for I sometimes have 
 a companion, take pleasure in fancying our- 
 selves knights of a new, or rather an old, 
 order, not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not 
 Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more 
 ancient and honourable class, I trust. The 
 chivalric and heroic spirit which once be- 
 longed to the Rider seems now to reside 
 in, or perchance to have subsided into, the 
 Walker, not the Knight, but Walker, 
 Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, out- 
 side of Church and State and People. 
 
 We have felt that we almost alone here- 
 abouts practised this noble art; though, to 
 tell the truth, at least, if their own asser- 
 tions are to be received, most of my towns- 
 men would fain walk sometimes, as I do, 
 but they cannot. No wealth can buy the 
 requisite leisure, freedom, and independence 
 which are the capital in this profession. It 
 comes only by the grace of God. It requires 
 
 [58] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 a direct dispensation from Heaven to be- 
 come a walker. You must be born into the 
 family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, 
 non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, 
 can remember and have described to me 
 some walks which they took ten years ago, 
 in which they were so blessed as to lose 
 themselves for half an hour in the woods ; 
 but I know very well that they have con- 
 fined themselves to the highway ever since, 
 whatever pretensions they may make to be- 
 long to this select class. No doubt they were 
 elevated for a moment as by the reminis- 
 cence of a previous state of existence, when 
 even they were foresters and outlaws. 
 
 When he came to grene wade, 
 
 In a mery mornynge, 
 There he herde the notes small 
 
 Ofbyrdes mery syngynge. 
 
 It isferre gone^ sayd Robyn, 
 
 That I ^was last here; 
 Me lyste a ly tell for to shote 
 
 At the donne dere. 
 
 I think that I cannot preserve my health 
 and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day 
 
 [ 59] 
 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 at least, and it is commonly more than 
 that, sauntering through the woods and 
 over the hills and fields, absolutely free from 
 all worldly engagements. You may safely 
 say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thou- 
 sand pounds. When sometimes I am re- 
 minded that the mechanics and shopkeepers 
 stay in their shops not only all the fore- 
 noon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with 
 crossed legs, so many of them, as if the 
 legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand 
 or walk upon, I think that they deserve 
 some credit for not having all committed 
 suicide long ago. 
 
 I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a 
 single day without acquiring some rust, and 
 when sometimes I have stolen forth for a 
 walk at the eleventh hour or four o'clock 
 in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, 
 when the shades of night were already be- 
 ginning to be mingled with the daylight, 
 have felt as if I had committed some sin 
 to be atoned for, I confess that I am as- 
 tonished at the power of endurance, to say 
 nothing of the moral insensibility, of my 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 neighbours who confine themselves to shops 
 and offices the whole day for weeks and 
 months, aye, and years almost together. I 
 know not what manner of stuff they are of, 
 sitting there now at three o'clock in the 
 afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the 
 morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three- 
 o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is 
 nothing to the courage which can sit down 
 cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over 
 against one's self whom you have known 
 all the morning, to starve out a garrison to 
 whom you are bound by such strong ties 
 of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, 
 or say between four and five o'clock in the 
 afternoon, too late for the morning papers 
 and too early for the evening ones, there is 
 not a general explosion heard up and down 
 the street, scattering a legion of antiquated 
 and house-bred notions and whims to the 
 four winds for an airing, and so the evil 
 cure itself. 
 
 How womankind, who are confined to 
 the house still more than men, stand it I 
 do not know; but I have ground to suspect 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 that most of them do not stand it at all. 
 When, early in a summer afternoon, we 
 have been shaking the dust of the village 
 from the skirts of our garments, making 
 haste past those houses with purely Doric 
 or Gothic fronts, which have such an air 
 of repose about them, my companion whis- 
 pers that probably about these times their 
 occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is 
 that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of 
 architecture, which itself never turns in, but 
 forever stands out and erect, keeping watch 
 over the slumberers. 
 
 No doubt temperament, and, above all, 
 age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man 
 grows older, his ability to sit still and follow 
 indoor occupations increases. He grows ves- 
 pertinal in his habits as the evening of life 
 approaches, till at last he comes forth only 
 just before sundown, and gets all the walk 
 that he requires in half an hour. 
 
 But the walking of which I speak has 
 nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it 
 is called, as the sick take medicine at stated 
 hours, as the swinging of dumb-bells or 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adven- 
 ture of the day. If you would get exercise, 
 go in search of the springs of life. Think of 
 a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, 
 when those springs are bubbling up in far- 
 off pastures unsought by him! 
 
 Moreover, you must walk like a camel, 
 which is said to be the only beast which rumi- 
 nates when walking. When a traveller asked 
 Wordsworth's servant to show him her mas- 
 ter's study, she answered, u Here is his li- 
 brary, but his study is out of doors." 
 
 Living much out of doors, in the sun and 
 wind, will no doubt produce a certain rough- 
 ness of character will cause a thicker cu- 
 ticle to grow over some of the finer qualities 
 of our nature, as on the face and hands, or 
 as severe manual labor robs the hands of some 
 of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the 
 house, on the other hand, may produce a 
 softness and smoothness, not to say thinness 
 of skin, accompanied by an increased sen- 
 sibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we 
 should be more susceptible to some influ- 
 ences important to our intellectual and moral 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 growth, if the sun had shone and the wind 
 blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is 
 a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick 
 and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf 
 that will fall off fast enough, that the nat- 
 ural remedy is to be found in the propor- 
 tion which the night bears to the day, the 
 winter to the summer, thought to experience. 
 There will be so much the more air and sun- 
 shine in our thoughts. The callous palms of 
 the labourer are conversant with finer tissues 
 of self-respect and heroism, whose touch 
 thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of 
 idleness. That is mere sentimentality that 
 lies a-bed by day and thinks itself white, far 
 from the tan and callus of experience. 
 
 When we walk, we naturally go to the 
 fields and woods : what would become of us, 
 if we walked only in a garden or a mall? 
 Even some sects of philosophers have felt the 
 necessity of importing the woods to them- 
 selves, since they did not go to the woods. 
 "They planted groves and walks of Pla- 
 tanes," where they took subdiales ambula- 
 tiones in porticos open to the air. Of course 
 
 [64] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, 
 if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed 
 when it happens that I have walked a mile 
 into the woods bodily, without getting there 
 in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain 
 forget all my morning occupations and my 
 obligations to society. But it sometimes hap- 
 pens that I cannot easily shake off the vil- 
 lage. The thought of some work will run in 
 my head and I am not where my body is, 
 I am out of my senses. In my walks I would 
 fain return to my senses. What business have 
 I in the woods, if I am thinking of some- 
 thing out of the woods? I suspect my self, and 
 cannot help a shudder, when I find myself 
 so implicated even in what are called good 
 works, for this may sometimes happen. 
 My vicinity affords many good walks; and 
 though for so many years I have walked 
 almost every day, and sometimes for sev- 
 eral days together, I have not yet exhausted 
 them. An absolutely new prospect is a great 
 happiness, and I can still get this any after- 
 noon. Two or three hours' walking will 
 carry me to as strange a country as I expect 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 ever to see. A single farm-house which I had 
 not seen before is sometimes as good as the 
 dominions of the King of Dahomey. There 
 is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable be- 
 tween the capabilities of the landscape within 
 a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of 
 an afternoon walk, and the threescore years 
 and ten of human life. It will never become 
 quite familiar to you. 
 
 Nowadays almost all man's improve- 
 ments, so called, as the building of houses, 
 and the cutting down of the forest and of 
 all large trees, simply deform the landscape, 
 and make it more and more tame and cheap. 
 A people who would begin by burning the 
 fences and let the forest stand! I saw the 
 fences half consumed, their ends lost in the 
 middle of the prairie, and some worldly mi- 
 ser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, 
 while heaven had taken place around him, 
 and he did not see the angels going to and 
 fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in 
 the midst of paradise. I looked again, and 
 saw him standing in the middle of a boggy 
 Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 had found his bounds without a doubt, three 
 little stones, where a stake had been driven, 
 and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of 
 Darkness was his surveyor. 
 
 I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any 
 number of miles, commencing at my own 
 door, without going by any house, without 
 crossing a road except where the fox and 
 the mink do; first along by the river, and 
 then the brook, and then the meadow and 
 the woodside. There are square miles in 
 my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From 
 many a hill I can see civilization and the 
 abodes of man afar. The farmers and their 
 works are scarcely more obvious than wood- 
 chucks and their burrows. Man and his af- 
 fairs, church and state and school, trade and 
 commerce, and manufactures and agricul- 
 ture, even politics, the most alarming of 
 them all, I am pleased to see how little 
 space they occupy in the landscape. Politics 
 is but a narrow field, and that still narrower 
 highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes 
 direct the traveller thither. If you would go 
 to the political world, follow the great road, 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 follow that market-man, keep his dust in 
 your eyes, and it will lead you straight to 
 it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does 
 not occupy all space. I pass from it as from 
 a bean-field into the forest, and it is for- 
 gotten. In one half-hour I can walk off to 
 some portion of the earth's surface where 
 a man does not stand from one year's end 
 to another, and there, consequently, politics 
 are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke 
 of a man. 
 
 The village is the place to which the 
 roads tend, a sort of expansion of the high- 
 way, as a lake of a river. It is the body of 
 which roads are the arms and legs, a triv- 
 ial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and 
 ordinary of travellers. The word is from the 
 Latin villa, which together with via, a way, 
 or more anciently ved and vella, Varro de- 
 rives from veho, to carry, because the villa 
 is the place to and from which things are 
 carried. They who got their living by team- 
 ing were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too, 
 the Latin word vilis and our vile; also vil- 
 lain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by 
 the travel that goes by and over them, with- 
 out travelling themselves. 
 
 Some do not walk at all; others walk in 
 the highways ; a few walk across lots. Roads 
 are made for horses and men of business. I 
 do not travel in them much, comparatively, 
 because I am not in a hurry to get to any 
 tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot 
 to which they lead. I am a good horse to 
 travel, but not from choice a roadster. 
 The landscape-painter uses the figures of 
 men to mark a road. He would not make 
 that use of my figure. I walk out into a 
 Nature such as the old prophets and poets, 
 Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. 
 You may name it America, but it is not 
 America; neither Americus Vespucius, nor 
 Columbus, nor the rest were the discover- 
 ers of it. There is a truer account of it in 
 mythology than in any history of America, 
 so-called, that I have seen. 
 
 What is it that makes it so hard some- 
 times to determine whither we will walk ? I 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 believe that there is a subtle magnetism, in 
 Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield 
 to it, will direct us aright. It is not indiffer- 
 ent to us which way we walk. There is a 
 right way ; but we are very liable from heed- 
 lessness and stupidity to take the wrong 
 one. We would fain take that walk, never 
 yet taken by us through this actual world, 
 which is perfectly symbolical of the path 
 which we love to travel in the interior and 
 ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we 
 find it difficult to choose our direction, be- 
 cause it does not yet exist distinctly in our 
 idea. 
 
 When I go out of the house for a walk, 
 uncertain as yet whither I will bend my 
 steps, and submit myself to my instinct to 
 decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical 
 as it may seem, that I finally and inevita- 
 bly settle southwest, toward some particular 
 wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill 
 in that direction. My needle is slow to set- 
 tle, varies a few degrees, and does not 
 always point due southwest, it is true, and 
 it has good authority for this variation, but 
 
 [70] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 it always settles between west and south- 
 southwest. The future lies that way to me, 
 and the earth seems more unexhausted and 
 richer on that side. The outline which would 
 bound my walks would be, not a circle, but 
 a parabola, or rather like one of those com- 
 etary orbits which have been thought to be 
 non-returning curves, in this case opening 
 westward, in which my house occupies the 
 place of the sun. I turn round and round 
 irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an 
 hour, until I decide, for a thousandth time, 
 that I will walk into the southwest or west. 
 Eastward I go only by force ; but westward 
 I go free. Thither no business leads me. It 
 is hard for me to believe that I shall find 
 fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and 
 freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am 
 not excited by the prospect of a walk thither ; 
 but I believe that the forest which I see 
 in the western horizon stretches uninter- 
 ruptedly toward the setting sun, and there 
 are no towns nor cities in it of enough con- 
 sequence to disturb me. Let me live where 
 I will, on this side is the city, on that the 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city 
 more and more, and withdrawing into the 
 wilderness. . . . 
 
 I know not how significant it is, or how 
 far it is an evidence of singularity, that an 
 individual should thus consent in his petti- 
 est walk with the general movement of the 
 race; but I know that something akin to 
 the migratory instinct in birds and quadru- 
 peds, which, in some instances, is known 
 to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling 
 them to a general and mysterious move- 
 ment, in which they were seen, say some, 
 crossing the broadest rivers, each on its par- 
 ticular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, 
 and bridging narrower streams with their 
 dead, that something like the furor which 
 affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and 
 which is referred to a worm in their tails, 
 affects both nations and individuals, either 
 perennially or from time to time. Not a flock 
 of wild geese cackles over our town, but it 
 to some extent unsettles the value of real 
 estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should 
 probably take that disturbance into account. 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 nan longenfolk to gon on pilgrimages, 
 And -palmer es for to seken strange strondes. 
 
 Every sunset which I witness inspires me 
 with the desire to go to a West as distant and 
 as fair as that into which the sun goes down. 
 He appears to migrate westward daily, and 
 tempt us to follow him. He is the Great 
 Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. 
 We dream all night of those mountain-ridges 
 in the horizon, though they maybe of vapour 
 only, which were last gilded by his rays. 
 The island of Atlantis, and the islands and 
 gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terres- 
 trial paradise, appear to have been the Great 
 West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery 
 and poetry. Who has not seen in imagina- 
 tion, when looking into the sunset sky, the 
 gardens of the Hesperides, and the founda- 
 tion of all those fables ? 
 
 We had a remarkable sunset one day last 
 November. I was walking in a meadow, 
 the source of a small brook, when the sun 
 at last, just before setting, after a cold gray 
 
 [73] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, 
 and the softest, brightest morning sunlight 
 fell on the dry grass and on the stems of 
 the trees in the opposite horizon and on 
 the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hillside, 
 while our shadows stretched long over the 
 meadow eastward, as if we were the only 
 motes in its beams. It was such a light as 
 we could not have imagined a moment be- 
 fore, and the air also was so warm and se- 
 rene that nothing was wanting to make a 
 paradise of that meadow. When we reflected 
 that this was not a solitary phenomenon, 
 never to happen again, but that it would hap- 
 pen forever and ever an infinite number of 
 evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest 
 child that walked there, it was more glorious 
 still. 
 
 The sun sets on some retired meadow, 
 where no house is visible, with all the glory 
 and splendour that it lavishes on cities, and 
 perchance as it has never set before, where 
 there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to have 
 his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash 
 looks out from his cabin, and there is some 
 
 [74] 
 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 
 
 little black-veined brook in the midst of the 
 marsh, just beginning to meander, winding 
 slowly round a decaying stump. We walked 
 in so pure and bright a light, gilding the 
 withered grass and leaves, so softly and se- 
 renely bright, I thought I had never bathed 
 in such a golden flood, without a ripple or 
 a murmur to it. The west side of every wood 
 and rising ground gleamed like the boundary 
 of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed 
 like a gentle herdsman driving us home at 
 evening. 
 
 So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till 
 one day the sun shall shine more brightly 
 than ever he has done, shall perchance shine 
 into our minds and hearts, and light up our 
 whole lives with a great awakening light, as 
 warm and serene and golden as on a bank- 
 side in autumn. 
 
 [75] 
 
ON THE ROADS 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 
 
 1 HE road winds onward long and white, 
 It curves in mazy coils, and crooks 
 A beckoning finger down the height; 
 It calls me with the voice of brooks 
 To thirsty travellers in the night. 
 
 I leave the lonely city street, 
 The awful silence of the crowd ; 
 The rhythm of the roads I beat, 
 My blood leaps up, I shout aloud, 
 My heart keeps measure with my feet. 
 
 A bird sings something in my ear, 
 The wind sings in my blood a song 
 ' T is good at times for a man to hear; 
 The road winds onward white and long, 
 And the best of Earth is here! 
 
 [76] 
 
THE EXHILARATIONS OF 
 THE ROAD 
 
 JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 OCCASIONALLY on the sidewalk, 
 amid the dapper, swiftly-moving, high- 
 heeled boots and gaiters, I catch a glimpse 
 of the naked human foot. Nimbly it scuffs 
 along, the toes spread, the sides flatten, the 
 heel protrudes; it grasps the curbing, or 
 bends to the form of the uneven surfaces, 
 a thing sensuous and alive, that seems to 
 take cognizance of whatever it touches or 
 passes. How primitive and uncivil it looks 
 in such company, a real barbarian in the 
 parlour! We are so unused to the human 
 anatomy, to simple, unadorned nature, that 
 it looks a little repulsive; but it is beautiful 
 for all that. Though it be a black foot and 
 an unwashed foot, it shall be exalted. It is 
 a thing of life amid leather, a free spirit amid 
 cramped, a wild bird amid caged, an athlete 
 amid consumptives. It is the symbol of my 
 order, the Order of Walkers. That unham- 
 pered, vitally playing piece of anatomy is the 
 
 [77] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 type of the pedestrian, man returned to first 
 principles, in direct contact and intercourse 
 with the earth and the elements, his facul- 
 ties 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 unfortunate 
 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 
 looking out for a chance to ride. 
 
 When I see the discomforts that able-bod- 
 ied 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 tempera- 
 ture 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 
 
 [78] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 women and children, hanging by tooth and 
 nail to a square inch of the platform, im- 
 perilling 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 footpaths, no community of ownership 
 in the land which they imply, that warns off 
 the walker as a trespasser, that knows no 
 way but the highway, the carriage-way, that 
 forgets the stile, the foot-bridge, that even 
 ignores the rights of the pedestrian in the 
 public road, providing no escape for him but 
 in the ditch or up the bank, is in a fair way 
 to far more serious degeneracy. 
 
 Shakespeare makes the chief qualification 
 of the walker a merry heart: 
 
 Jog on, jog on, the footpath 
 And merrily hent the stile-a j 
 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 Tour sad tires in a mile-a. 
 
 The human body is a steed that goes freest 
 and longest under a light rider, and the light- 
 
 [79] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 est of all riders is a cheerful heart. Your sad, 
 or morose, or embittered, or preoccupied 
 heart settles heavily into the saddle, and the 
 poor beast, the body, breaks down the first 
 mile. Indeed, the heaviest thing in the world 
 is a heavy heart. Next to that, the most bur- 
 densome to the walker is a heart not in per- 
 fect sympathy and accord with the body, 
 a reluctant or unwilling heart. The horse and 
 rider must not only both be willing to go 
 the same way, but the rider must lead the 
 way and infuse his own lightness and eager- 
 ness into the steed. Herein is no doubt our 
 trouble, and one reason of the decay of the 
 noble art in this country. We are unwilling 
 walkers. We are not innocent and simple- 
 hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have 
 fallen from that state of grace which capa- 
 city to enjoy a walk implies. It cannot be said 
 that as a people we are so positively sad, or 
 morose, or melancholic as that we are vacant 
 of that sportiveness and surplusage of animal 
 spirits that characterised our ancestors, and 
 that springs from full and harmonious life, 
 a sound heart in accord with a sound body. 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 A man must invest himself near at hand and 
 in common things, and be content with a 
 steady and moderate return, if he would 
 know the blessedness of a cheerful heart and 
 the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. 
 This is a lesson the American has yet to 
 learn, capability of amusement on a low 
 key. He expects rapid and extraordinary 
 returns. He would make the very elemental 
 laws pay usury. He has nothing to invest in 
 a walk; it is too slow, too cheap. We crave 
 the astonishing, the exciting, the far away, 
 and do not know the highways of the gods 
 when we see them, always a sign of the 
 decay of the faith and simplicity of man. 
 
 If I say to my neighbour, "Come with me, 
 I have great wonders to show you," he pricks 
 up his ears and comes forthwith; but when 
 I take him on the hills under the full blaze 
 of the sun, or along the country road, our 
 footsteps lighted by the moon and stars, and 
 say to him, " Behold, these are the wonders, 
 these are the circuits of the gods, this we now 
 tread is a morning star," he feels defrauded, 
 and as if I had played him a trick. And yet 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 nothing less than dilatation and enthusiasm 
 like this is the badge of the master walker. 
 
 If we are not sad, we are careworn, hur- 
 ried, discontented, mortgaging the present 
 for the promise of the future. If we take a 
 walk, it is as we take a prescription, with 
 about the same relish and with about the same 
 purpose; and the more the fatigue the greater 
 our faith in the virtue of the medicine. 
 
 Of these gleesome saunters over the hills 
 in spring, or those sallies of the body in 
 winter, those excursions into space when 
 the foot strikes fire at every step, when the 
 air tastes like a new and finer mixture, when 
 we accumulate force and gladness as we 
 go along, when the sight of objects by the 
 roadside and of the fields and woods pleases 
 more than pictures or than all the art in 
 the world, those ten or twelve mile dashes 
 that are but the wit and effluence of the 
 corporeal powers, of such diversion and 
 open road entertainment, I say, most of us 
 know very little. 
 
 I notice with astonishment that at our 
 fashionable watering-places nobody walks; 
 
 [82] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 that, of all those vast crowds of health- 
 seekers and lovers of country air, you can 
 never catch one in the fields or woods, or 
 guilty of trudging along the country road 
 with dust on his shoes and sun-tan on his 
 hands and face. The sole amusement seems 
 to be to eat and dress and sit about the ho- 
 tels and glare at each other. The men look 
 bored, the women look tired, and all seem 
 to sigh, U O Lord! what shall we do to be 
 happy and not be vulgar ?" Quite different 
 from our British cousins across the water, 
 who have plenty of amusement and hilarity, 
 spending most of the time at their watering- 
 places in the open air, strolling, picnicking, 
 boating, climbing, briskly walking, appar- 
 ently with little fear of sun-tan or of com- 
 promising their "gentility." 
 
 It is indeed astonishing with what ease 
 and hilarity the English walk. To an Ameri- 
 can it seems a kind of infatuation. When 
 Dickens was in this country, I imagine the 
 aspirants to the honour of a walk with him 
 were not numerous. In a pedestrian tour 
 of England by an American, I read that, 
 
 [83] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 "after breakfast with the Independent min- 
 ister, he walked with us for six miles out of 
 town upon our road. Three little boys and 
 girls, the youngest six years old, also accom- 
 panied us. They were romping and rambling 
 about all the while, and their morning walk 
 must have been as much as fifteen miles; 
 but they thought nothing of it, and when 
 we parted were apparently as fresh as when 
 we started, and very loath to return." 
 
 I fear, also, the American is becoming 
 disqualified for the manly art of walking by 
 a falling off* in the size of his foot. He cher- 
 ishes and cultivates this part of his anatomy, 
 and apparently thinks his taste and good 
 breeding are to be inferred from its diminu- 
 tive size. A small, trim foot, well booted 
 or gaitered, is the national vanity. How we 
 stare at the big feet of foreigners, and won- 
 der what may be the price of leather in those 
 countries, and where all the aristocratic blood 
 is, that these plebeian extremities so pre- 
 dominate ! If we were admitted to the con- 
 fidences of the shoemaker to Her Majesty or 
 to His Royal Highness, no doubt we should 
 
 [84] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 modify our views upon this latter point, for 
 a truly large and royal nature is never stunted 
 in the extremities ; a little foot never yet 
 supported a great character. 
 
 It is said that Englishmen when they 
 first come to this country are for some time 
 under the impression that American women 
 all have deformed feet, they are so coy of 
 them and so studiously careful to keep them 
 hid. That there is an astonishing difference 
 between the women of the two countries in 
 this respect, every traveller can testify; and 
 that there is a difference equally astonishing 
 between the pedestrian habits and capabili- 
 ties of the rival sisters, is also certain. 
 
 The English pedestrian, no doubt, has the 
 advantage of us in the matter of climate; for, 
 notwithstanding the traditional gloom and 
 moroseness of English skies, they have in 
 that country none of those relaxing, sinking, 
 enervating days, of which we have so many 
 here, and which seem especially trying to 
 the female constitution, days which with- 
 draw all support from the back and loins, 
 and render walking of all things burden- 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 some. Theirs is a climate of which it has 
 been said that "it invites men abroad more 
 days in the year and more hours in the day 
 than that of any other country." 
 
 Then their land is threaded with paths 
 which invite the walker, and which are 
 scarcely less important than the highways. 
 I heard of a surly nobleman near London 
 who took it into his head to close a footpath 
 that passed through his estate near his house, 
 and open another one a little farther off. The 
 pedestrians objected ; the matter got into the 
 courts, and after protracted litigation the 
 aristocrat was beaten. The path could not 
 be closed or moved. The memory of man 
 ran not to the time when there was not a 
 footpath there, and every pedestrian should 
 have the right of way there still. 
 
 I remember the pleasure I had in the path 
 that connects Stratford-on-Avon with Shot- 
 tery, Shakespeare's path when he went court- 
 ing Anne Hathaway. By the king's highway 
 the distance is some farther, so there is a 
 well-worn path along the hedge-rows and 
 through the meadows and turnip patches. 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 The traveller in it has the privilege of cross- 
 ing the railroad track, an unusual privilege 
 in England, and one denied to the lord in 
 his carriage, who must either go over or 
 under it. (It is a privilege, is it not, to be 
 allowed the forbidden, even if it be the privi- 
 lege of being run over by the engine?) In 
 strolling over the South Downs, too, I was 
 delighted to find that where the hill was 
 steepest some benefactor of the order of 
 walkers had made notches in the sward, so 
 that the foot could bite the better and firmer; 
 the path became a kind of stairway, which 
 I have no doubt the ploughman respected. 
 When you see an English country church 
 withdrawn, secluded, out of the reach of 
 wheels, standing amid grassy graves and sur- 
 rounded by noble trees, approached by paths 
 and shaded lanes, you appreciate more than 
 ever this beautiful habit of the people. Only 
 a race that knows how to use its feet, and 
 holds footpaths sacred, could put such a 
 charm of privacy and humility into such 
 a structure. I think I should be tempted to 
 go to church myself if I saw all my neigh- 
 
 [87] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 hours starting off across the fields or along 
 paths that led to such charmed spots, and 
 were sure I should not be jostled or run over 
 by the rival chariots of the worshippers at 
 the temple doors. I think this is what ails 
 our religion; humility and devoutness of 
 hearts leave one when he lays by his walking 
 shoe and walking clothes, and sets out for 
 church drawn by something. 
 
 Indeed, I think it would be tantamount 
 to an astonishing revival of religion if the 
 people would all walk to church on Sunday 
 and walk home again. Think how the stones 
 would preach to them by the wayside; how 
 their benumbed minds would warm up be- 
 neath the friction of the gravel; how their 
 vain and foolish thoughts, their desponding 
 thoughts, their besetting demons of one kind 
 and another, would drop behind them, un- 
 able to keep up or to endure the fresh air! 
 They would walk away from their ennui, 
 their worldly cares, their uncharitableness, 
 their pride of dress; for these devils always 
 want to ride, while the simple virtues are 
 never so happy as when on foot. Let us walk 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 by all means; but if we will ride, get an ass. 
 Then the English claim that they are a 
 more hearty and robust people than we are. 
 It is certain they are a plainer people, have 
 plainer tastes, dress plainer, build plainer, 
 speak plainer, keep closer to facts, wear 
 broader shoes and coarser clothes, place a 
 lower estimate on themselves, etc., all of 
 which traits favour pedestrian habits. The 
 English grandee is not confined to his car- 
 riage; but if the American aristocrat leaves 
 his, he is ruined. Oh the weariness, the emp- 
 tiness, the plotting, the seeking rest and find- 
 ing none, that go by in the carriages! while 
 your pedestrian is always cheerful, alert, 
 refreshed, with his heart in his hand and 
 his hand free to all. He looks down upon 
 nobody ; he is on the common level. His 
 pores are all open, his circulation is active, 
 his digestion good. His heart is not cold, nor 
 are his faculties asleep. He is the only real 
 traveller ; he alone tastes the "gay, fresh sen- 
 timent of the road." He is not isolated, but 
 one with things, with the farms and indus- 
 tries on either hand. The vital, universal 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 currents play through him. He knows the 
 ground is alive; he feels the pulses of the 
 wind, and reads the mute language of things. 
 His sympathies are all aroused; his senses 
 are continually reporting messages to his 
 mind. Wind, frost, rain, heat, cold, are 
 something to him. He is not merely a spec- 
 tator of the panorama of nature, but a par- 
 ticipator in it. He experiences the country 
 he passes through, tastes it, feels it, ab- 
 sorbs it; the traveller in his fine carriage sees 
 it merely. This gives the fresh charm to that 
 class of books that may be called u Views 
 Afoot," and to the narratives of hunters, nat- 
 uralists, exploring parties, etc. The walker 
 does not need a large territory. When you 
 get into a railway car you want a continent, 
 the man in his carriage requires a town- 
 ship; but a walker like Thoreau finds as 
 much and more along the shores of Walden 
 Pond. The former, as it were, has merely 
 time to glance at the headings of the chap- 
 ters, while the latter need not miss a line, 
 and Thoreau reads between the lines. Then 
 the walker has the privilege of the fields, 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 the woods, the hills, the byways. The apples 
 by the roadside are for him, and the berries, 
 and the spring of water, and the friendly 
 shelter ; and if the weather is cold, he eats 
 the frost grapes and the persimmons, or even 
 the white-meated turnip, snatched from the 
 field he passed through, with incredible 
 relish. 
 
 Afoot and in the open road, one has a fair 
 start in life at last. There is no hindrance 
 now. Let him put his best foot forward. He 
 is on the broadest human plane. This is on 
 the level of all the great laws and heroic 
 deeds. From this platform he is eligible to 
 any good fortune. He was sighing for the 
 golden age; let him walk to it. Every step 
 brings him nearer. The youth of the world 
 is but a few days' journey distant. Indeed, 
 I know persons who think they have walked 
 back to that fresh aforetime of a single bright 
 Sunday in autumn or early spring. Before 
 noon they felt its airs upon their cheeks, 
 and by nightfall, on the banks of some quiet 
 stream, or along some path in the wood, or 
 on some hilltop, aver they have heard the 
 
 [9- ] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 voices and felt the wonder and the mystery 
 that so enchanted the early races of men. 
 I think if I could walk through a coun- 
 try I should not only see many things and 
 have adventures that I should otherwise 
 miss, but that I should come into relations 
 with that country at first hand, and with 
 the men and women in it, in a way that 
 would afford the deepest satisfaction. Hence 
 I envy the good fortune of all walkers, and 
 feel like joining myself to every tramp that 
 comes along. I am jealous of the clergyman 
 I read about the other day, who footed it 
 from Edinburgh to London, as poor Effie 
 Deans did, carrying her shoes in her hand 
 most of the way, and over the ground that 
 rugged Ben Jonson strode, larking it to 
 Scotland, so long ago. I read with longing 
 of the pedestrian feats of college youths, 
 so gay and light-hearted, with their coarse 
 shoes on their feet and their knapsacks on 
 their backs. It would have been a good 
 draught of the rugged cup to have walked 
 with Wilson the ornithologist, deserted by 
 his companions, from Niagara to Philadel- 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 phia through the snows of winter. I almost 
 wish that I had been born to the career of 
 a German mechanic, that I might have had 
 that delicious adventurous year of wander- 
 ing over my country before I settled down to 
 work. I think how much richer and firmer- 
 grained life would be to me if I could jour- 
 ney afoot through Florida and Texas, or 
 follow the windings of the Platte or the 
 Yellowstone, or stroll through Oregon, or 
 browse for a season about Canada. In the 
 bright inspiring days of autumn I only want 
 the time and the companion to walk back 
 to the natal spot, the family nest, across 
 two States and into the mountains of a third. 
 What adventures we would have by the 
 way, what hard pulls, what prospects from 
 hills, what spectacles we would behold of 
 night and day, what passages with dogs, 
 what glances, what peeps into windows, 
 what characters we should fall in with, and 
 how seasoned and hardy we should arrive 
 at our destination ! 
 
 For companion I should want a veteran 
 of the war! Those marches put something 
 
 [93] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 into him I like. Even at this distance his 
 mettle is but little softened. As soon as he 
 gets warmed up it all comes back to him. 
 He catches your step and away you go, a 
 gay, adventurous, half-predatory couple. 
 How quickly he falls into the old ways of 
 jest and anecdote and song! You may have 
 known him for years without having heard 
 him hum an air, or more than casually revert 
 to the subject of his experience during the 
 war. You have even questioned and cross- 
 questioned him without firing the train you 
 wished. But get him out on a vacation tramp, 
 and you can walk it all out of him. By the 
 camp-fire at night, or swinging along the 
 streams by day, song, anecdote, adventure, 
 come to the surface, and you wonder how 
 your companion has kept silent so long. 
 
 It is another proof of how walking brings 
 out the true character of a man. The devil 
 never yet asked his victims to take a walk 
 with him. You will not be long in finding 
 your companion out. All disguises will fall 
 away from him. As his pores open, his char- 
 acter is laid bare. His deepest and most pri- 
 
 [94] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 vate self will come to the top. It matters 
 little whom you ride with, so he be not a 
 pickpocket; for both of you will, very likely, 
 settle down closer and firmer in your reserve, 
 shaken down like a measure of corn by the 
 jolting as the journey proceeds. But walk- 
 ing is a more vital copartnership; the relation 
 is a closer and more sympathetic one, and 
 you do not feel like walking ten paces with 
 a stranger without speaking to him. 
 
 Hence the fastidiousness of the profes- 
 sional walker in choosing or admitting a com- 
 panion, and hence the truth of a remark of 
 Emerson that you will generally fare better 
 to take your dog than to invite your neigh- 
 bour. Your cur-dog is a true pedestrian, and 
 your neighbour is very likely a small politi- 
 cian. The dog enters thoroughly into the 
 spirit of the enterprise; he is not indifferent 
 or preoccupied; he is constantly sniffing ad- 
 venture, laps at every spring, looks upon 
 every field and wood as a new world to be 
 explored, is ever on some fresh trail, knows 
 something important will happen a little far- 
 ther on, gazes with the true wonder-seeing 
 
 [95] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 eyes, whatever the spot or whatever the road 
 finds it good to be there, in short, is just 
 that happy, delicious, excursive vagabond 
 that touches one at so many points, and 
 whose human prototype in a companion robs 
 miles and leagues of half their power to 
 fatigue. 
 
 Persons who find themselves spent in a 
 short walk to the market or the post-office, 
 or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is 
 that their pedestrian friends can compass so 
 many weary miles and not fall down from 
 sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that 
 the walker is a kind of projectile that drops 
 far or near according to the expansive force 
 of the motive that set it in motion, and that 
 it is easy enough to regulate the charge ac- 
 cording to the distance to be traversed. If I 
 am loaded to carry only one mile and am 
 compelled to walk three, I generally feel 
 more fatigue than if I had walked six under 
 the proper impetus of preadjusted resolu- 
 tion. In other words, the will or corporeal 
 mainspring, whatever it be, is capable of be- 
 ing wound up to different degrees of ten- 
 
 [96] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 sion, so that one may walk all day nearly 
 as easy as half that time if he is prepared 
 beforehand. He knows his task, and he mea- 
 sures and distributes his powers accordingly. 
 It is for this reason that an unknown road 
 is always a long road. We cannot cast the 
 mental eye along it and see the end from 
 the beginning. We are fighting in the dark, 
 and cannot take the measure of our foe. 
 Every step must be preordained and pro- 
 vided for in the mind. Hence also the fact 
 that to vanquish one mile in the woods seems 
 equal to compassing three in the open coun- 
 try. The furlongs are ambushed, and we 
 magnify them. 
 
 Then, again, how annoying to be told it 
 is only five miles to the next place when 
 it is really eight or ten ! We fall short nearly 
 half the distance, and are compelled to urge 
 and roll the spent ball the rest of the way. 
 In such a case walking degenerates from a 
 fine art to a mechanic art; we walk merely; 
 to get over the ground becomes the one seri- 
 ous and engrossing thought; whereas suc- 
 cess in walking is not to let your right foot 
 
 [97] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 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 distance; 
 his walk is a sally, a bon mot, an unspoken 
 jeu d* esprit ; the ground is his butt, his pro- 
 vocation; 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 impor- 
 tance or the charms of pedestrianism, or our 
 need as a people to cultivate the art. I think 
 it would tend to soften the national man- 
 ners, 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 labourer in the fields, the walker 
 holds the closest relation to the soil; and 
 he holds a closer and more vital relation to 
 
 [98] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 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 com- 
 munication 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 make a man kindred to the spot of 
 earth he inhabits. 
 
 The roads and paths you have walked 
 along in summer and winter weather, the 
 fields and hills which you have looked upon 
 in lightness and gladness of heart, where 
 fresh thoughts have come into your mind, 
 or some noble prospect has opened before 
 you, and especially the quiet ways where 
 you have walked in sweet converse with 
 your friend, pausing under the trees, drink- 
 ing at the spring, henceforth they are not 
 the same; a new charm is added; those 
 thoughts spring there perennial, your friend 
 walks there forever. 
 
 [99] 
 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
 
 We have produced some good walkers 
 and saunterers, and some noted climbers; 
 but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, 
 the mass of the people 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 sweetness 
 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 henceforth rests not. The 
 joy of moving and surmounting, of attrition 
 and progression, the thirst for space, for 
 miles and leagues of distance, for sights and 
 prospects, to cross mountains and thread 
 rivers, and defy frost, heat, snow, danger, 
 
JOHN B'UkRb'tTGHS' 
 
 difficulties, seizes it; and from that day forth 
 its possessor is enrolled in the noble army of 
 walkers. 
 
 [ ,0. ] 
 
NIGHT AND THE INN 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS 
 (FROM " THE MESSAGE OF THE MARCH WIND") 
 
 F ROM township to township, o'er down 
 and by tillage 
 
 fair, far have we wandered and long 
 was the day ; 
 
 But now cometh eve at the end of the vil- 
 lage, 
 
 Where over the grey wall the church 
 riseth grey. 
 
 There is wind in the twilight; in the 
 white road before us 
 
 The straw from the ox-yard is blowing 
 about; 
 
 The moon's rim is rising, a star glitters 
 0Vr us, 
 
 And the vane on the spire-top is swing- 
 ing in doubt. 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 Down there dips the highway, toward 
 
 the bridge crossing over 
 The brook that runs on to the Thames 
 
 and the sea. 
 Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover 
 
 and lover; 
 This eve art thou given to gladness and 
 
 me. 
 
 Come back to the inn, love, and the lights 
 and thejire, 
 
 And the fiddlers old tune and the shuf- 
 fling of feet; 
 
 For there in a while shall be rest and 
 desire, 
 
 And there shall the morrow^ s uprising 
 be sweet. 
 
 Yet, love, as we wend, the wind blow- 
 eth behind us, 
 
 And beareth the last tale it telleth to- 
 night, 
 
 [ '03] 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 
 
 How here in the springtide the message 
 
 shall find us; 
 For the hope that none seeketh is coming 
 
 to light. 
 
 
 For it beareth the message: "Rise up on 
 
 the morrow, 
 And go on your ways toward the doubt 
 
 and the strife; 
 Join hope to our hope and blend sorrow 
 
 with sorrow. 
 And seek for men* s love in the short days 
 
 of life." 
 
 But lo, the old inn, and the lights, and 
 the fire, 
 
 And the fiddlers old tune and the shuf- 
 fling f ft et ; 
 
 Soon for us shall be quiet and rest and 
 desire, 
 
 And to-morrow'* s uprising to deeds shall 
 be sweet. 
 
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