l one's bones have been exhausted. Climbing
ropes and poles with nothing but cobwebs at the top, and leaping horses
with only tan at the bottom, grow monotonous after six months' steady
dissipation thereat. Base-ball clubs do not always find desirable
commons, and the municipal fathers of the towns have a prejudice against
them in the streets. What shall youth, conscious of muscle and eager for
fresh air, do? Even the gloves are not fancy-free, but are very apt to
bring with them the slang of the ring and the beastly associations
of professional pugilism. Youth looks up to its teachers; but if its
teachers in the manly art be the Game-Chicken, the Pet, the Slasher,
youth, in learning to respect the brute strength of such men, will
hardly learn to respect itself.

But--and here lies the purport of this article--there is hardly a town
or village of New England which has not within a quarter of a mile of
its suburbs a patch of woodland or a strip of sandy beach. What is to
hinder the sinner, if he repent him of the foul air and cramped posture
of which he has been the victim, from a little pedestrianism? Do
American men and boys ever walk? Drive, it is known they do; they can
always get time for that. But to walk, certainly to scramble and to
climb, must be added by Mr. Phillips, in the new editions of his
exquisite and inexhaustible Lecture, to the catalogue of the "Lost
Arts."

Yet Nature never grows outworn,--is unwearied in the bounty which she
bestows on the seeker. I said a strip of sandy beach, just now. For that
I beg leave to refer the reader to Mr. Kingsley's fascinating "Glaucus,"
and to the delightful papers which appeared in "Blackwood" a year or two
ago. My business is with the woods and fields. Certainly some who read
my pages will have leisure to climb a stone wall now and then, and for
them the following sketches of New England wood-walks may serve to show
how much enjoyment may be got with but little outlay of appliances. Of
course the most tempting thing to seek is sport. But the gun and the
fishing-rod are useless in many towns, from the disappearance of all
worthy objects for their exercise. The birds are wild and shy; the trout
have been _coculus-indicused_ out of the mountain-brooks to supply
metropolitan hotel-tables and Delmonican larders. Let us go after more
attainable things. And first, being a true nemophilist, I protest
against botany. A flower worth a five-mile walk and a wet foot is worthy