Outdoor Sports and Games by Claude H. Miller
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page 15 of 288 (05%)
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country from New York to California and back again and maintaining an
average of forty miles a day. There is not a horse in the world that would have the endurance to go half the distance in the same time and keep it up day after day. For the first week or ten days the horse would be far ahead but, like the fable of the hare and the tortoise, after a while the tortoise would pass the hare and get in first. In walking for pleasure, avoid a rambling, purposeless style. Decide where you are going and go. Walk out in the country if possible and on roads where the automobiles will not endanger your life or blow clouds of dust in your face. Never mind the weather. One rarely takes cold while in motion. To walk comfortably we should wear loose clothing and old shoes. Walking just for the sake of exercise can easily become a tiresome occupation, but the active mind can always see something of interest, such as wild flowers, gardens, and all the various sides of nature study in the country, and people, houses and life in the city. A tramping vacation of several days furnishes a fine opportunity to see new scenes and to live economically, but near a city you may have difficulty in persuading the farm-wife where you stop that you are not a tramp who will burn the house in the night. If you intend to live by the wayside, the surest way to inspire confidence is to show in advance that you have money to pay for your accommodations. Also try to avoid looking like a tramp, which is quite different from looking like a tramper. There seems to be a great difference of opinion on the question of how fast one can walk. The popular idea is "four miles an hour" but any one who has tried to cover a mile every fifteen minutes will testify that such a rate of speed is more like a race than a walk and that it |
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