of Walkers. That unhampered, vitally playing piece of anatomy is the
type of the pedestrian, man returned to first principles, in direct
contact and intercourse with the earth and the elements, his faculties
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-bodied 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
temperature 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 women and children,
hanging by tooth and nail to a square inch of the platform, imperiling
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.