and heroic deeds. From this platform he is eligible to any good
fortune. He was sighing for the golden age; let him walk to it. Every
step brings him nearer. The youth of the world is but a few days'
journey distant. Indeed, I know persons who think they have walked back
to that fresh aforetime of a single bright Sunday in autumn or early
spring. Before noon they felt its airs upon their cheeks, and by
nightfall, on the banks of some quiet stream, or along some path in the
wood, or on some hilltop, aver they have heard the voices and felt the
wonder and the mystery that so enchanted the early races of men.

I think if I could walk through a country, I should not only see many
things and have adventures that I should otherwise miss, but that I
should come into relations with that country at first hand, and with
the men and women in it, in a way that would afford the deepest
satisfaction. Hence I envy the good fortune of all walkers, and feel
like joining myself to every tramp that comes along. I am jealous of
the clergyman I read about the other day, who footed it from Edinburgh
to London, as poor Effie Deans did, carrying her shoes in her hand most
of the way, and over the ground that rugged Ben Jonson strode, larking
it to Scotland, so long ago. I read with longing of the pedestrian
feats of college youths, so gay and light-hearted, with their coarse
shoes on their feet and their knapsacks on their backs. It would have
been a good draught of the rugged cup to have walked with Wilson the
ornithologist, deserted by his companions, from Niagara to Philadelphia
through the snows of winter. I almost wish that I had been born to the
career of a German mechanic, that I might have had that delicious
adventurous year of wandering over my country before I settled down to
work. I think how much richer and firmer-grained life would be to me if
I could journey afoot through Florida and Texas, or follow the windings
of the Platte or the Yellowstone, or stroll through Oregon, or browse