We Now No Longer Sailed Or Floated On The River, But Trod The
Unyielding Land Like Pilgrims.
Sadi tells who may travel; among
others, "A common mechanic, who can earn a subsistence by the
industry of
His hand, and shall not have to stake his reputation
for every morsel of bread, as philosophers have said." He may
travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most
cultivated country. A man may travel fast enough and earn his
living on the road. I have at times been applied to to do work
when on a journey; to do tinkering and repair clocks, when I had
a knapsack on my back. A man once applied to me to go into a
factory, stating conditions and wages, observing that I succeeded
in shutting the window of a railroad car in which we were
travelling, when the other passengers had failed. "Hast thou not
heard of a Sufi, who was hammering some nails into the sole of
his sandal; an officer of cavalry took him by the sleeve, saying,
Come along and shoe my horse." Farmers have asked me to assist
them in haying, when I was passing their fields. A man once
applied to me to mend his umbrella, taking me for an
umbrella-mender, because, being on a journey, I carried an
umbrella in my hand while the sun shone. Another wished to buy a
tin cup of me, observing that I had one strapped to my belt, and
a sauce-pan on my back. The cheapest way to travel, and the way
to travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot,
carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish-line, some Indian meal,
some salt, and some sugar. When you come to a brook or pond, you
can catch fish and cook them; or you can boil a hasty-pudding; or
you can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's house for fourpence,
moisten it in the next brook that crosses the road, and dip into
it your sugar, - this alone will last you a whole day; - or, if you
are accustomed to heartier living, you can buy a quart of milk
for two cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding into it, and eat
it with your own spoon out of your own dish. Any one of these
things I mean, not all together. I have travelled thus some
hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on
the ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many
respects more profitable, than staying at home. So that some
have inquired why it would not be best to travel always. But I
never thought of travelling simply as a means of getting a
livelihood. A simple woman down in Tyngsborough, at whose house
I once stopped to get a draught of water, when I said,
recognizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years
before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a traveller,
supposing that I had been travelling ever since, and had now come
round again; that travelling was one of the professions, more or
less productive, which her husband did not follow. But continued
travelling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away
the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it
will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the
bargain. I have observed that the after-life of those who have
travelled much is very pathetic. True and sincere travelling is
no pastime, but it is as serious as the grave, or any part of the
human journey, and it requires a long probation to be broken into
it. I do not speak of those that travel sitting, the sedentary
travellers whose legs hang dangling the while, mere idle symbols
of the fact, any more than when we speak of sitting hens we mean
those that sit standing, but I mean those to whom travelling is
life for the legs, and death too, at last. The traveller must be
born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements,
the principal powers that be for him. He shall experience at
last that old threat of his mother fulfilled, that he shall be
skinned alive. His sores shall gradually deepen themselves that
they may heal inwardly, while he gives no rest to the sole of his
foot, and at night weariness must be his pillow, that so he may
acquire experience against his rainy days. - So was it with us.
Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where trout-fishers
from distant cities had arrived before us, and where, to our
astonishment, the settlers dropped in at nightfall to have a chat
and hear the news, though there was but one road, and no other
house was visible, - as if they had come out of the earth. There
we sometimes read old newspapers, who never before read new ones,
and in the rustle of their leaves heard the dashing of the surf
along the Atlantic shore, instead of the sough of the wind among
the pines. But then walking had given us an appetite even for
the least palatable and nutritious food.
Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found
it impossible to read at home, but for which you have still a
lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey. At
a country inn, in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I
could undertake the writers of the silver or the brazen age with
confidence. Almost the last regular service which I performed in
the cause of literature was to read the works of
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.
If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out for the
poet, and approach this author too, in the hope of finding the
field at length fairly entered on, you will hardly dissent from
the words of the prologue,
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