like a measure of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds. But
walking is a more vital copartnership; the relation is a closer and
more sympathetic one, and you do not feel like walking ten paces with a
stranger without speaking to him.

Hence the fastidiousness of the professional walker in choosing or
admitting a companion, and hence the truth of a remark of Emerson, that
you will generally fare better to take your dog than to invite your
neighbor. Your cur-dog is a true pedestrian, and your neighbor is very
likely a small politician. The dog enters thoroughly into the spirit of
the enterprise; he is not indifferent or preoccupied; he is constantly
sniffing adventure, laps at every spring, looks upon every field and
wood as a new world to be explored, is ever on some fresh trail, knows
something important will happen a little farther on, gazes with the
true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot or whatever the road finds
it good to be there,--in short, is just that happy, delicious,
excursive vagabond that touches one at so many points, and whose human
prototype in a companion robs miles and leagues of half their power to
fatigue.

Persons who find themselves spent in a short walk to the market or the
post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that their
pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall down
from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a kind
of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force
of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough to
regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If I am
loaded to carry only one mile and am compelled to walk three, I
generally feel more fatigue than if I had walked six under the proper
impetus of preadjusted resolution. In other words, the will or