Whatever his trouble, the road
has eased him of his burden and made him a philosopher.
Thoreau, writing in the middle of the last century, deplores the fact
that in his day, as now, but few of his countrymen took any pleasure in
walking, and that very rarely one encountered a person with any real
appreciation of the beauty of Nature, which if he could but see it, lay
at his very door. Speaking for himself and companion in his rambles, he
says: "We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts (Concord,
Massachusetts) 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. Ambulator nascitur non fit.
Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me,
walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods."
Who is there who walks habitually, who does not know the man who tells
you of the walks he "used to take?" You have known him, say a dozen
years. During all that time, to your knowledge, his walks have
practically been limited by the distance to his office and back from the
ferry boat.
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