and other engines invented to confine men to the _public_ road, and
walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean
trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is
commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve
our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

* * * * *

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will
walk? I believe that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we
unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to
us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from
heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that
walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly
symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal
world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our
direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will
bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find,
strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle
southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or
hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle,--varies a few
degrees, and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has
good authority for this 'variation, but it always settles between west and
south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more
unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my
walks would be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those
cometary orbits which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in
this case opening westward, in which my house occupies the place of the