No More Learning

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers,
nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. 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 embalmed 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 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 ourselves knights of a
new, or rather an old, order,--not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not
Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable
class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged 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, outside of Church and State and People.

We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble
art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are
to be received, most of my townsmen 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 a direct dispensation from
Heaven to become 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
confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions
they may make to belong to this select class.
No doubt they were
elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence of a previous state of
existence, when even they were foresters and outlaws.

"When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngynge.

"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
That I was last here;
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere. "

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend
four hours a day 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 thousand pounds. When sometimes I am
reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not
only all the forenoon, 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 beginning to be mingled
with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be
atoned for,--I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance,
to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors 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 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 whispers
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 vespertinal 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.