siness, and
competition, can still find time to travel for pleasure alone--you, who
have yet to become emancipated from the thraldom of railways, carriages,
and saddle-horses--patronize, I exhort you, that first and
oldest-established of all conveyances, your own legs! Think on your
tender partings nipped in the bud by the railway bell; think of crabbed
cross-roads, and broken carriage-springs; think of luggage confided to
extortionate porters, of horses casting shoes and catching colds, of
cramped legs and numbed feet, of vain longings to get down for a moment
here, and to delay for a pleasant half hour there--think of all these
manifold hardships of riding at your ease; and the next time you leave
home, strap your luggage on your shoulders, take your stick in your
hand, set forth delivered from a perfect paraphernalia of incumbrances,
to go where you will, how you will--the free citizen of the whole
travelling world! Thus independent, what may you not accomplish?--what
pleasure is there that you cannot enjoy? Are you an artist?--you can
stop to sketch every point of view that strikes your eye. Are you a
philanthropist?--you can go into every cottage and talk to every human
being you pass. Are you a botanist, or geologist?--you may pick up
leaves and chip rocks wherever you please, the live-long day. Are you a
valetudinarian?--you may physic yourself by Nature's own simple
prescription, walking in fresh air. Are you dilatory and
irresolute?--you may dawdle to your heart's content; you may change all
your plans a dozen times in a dozen hours; you may tell "Boots" at the
inn to call you at six o'clock, may fall asleep again (ecstatic
sensation!) five minutes after he has knocked at the door, and may get
up two hours later, to pursue your journey, with perfect impunity and
satisfaction. For, to you, what is a time-table but waste-paper?--and a
"booked place" but a relic of the dark ages? You dread, perhaps,
blisters on your feet--sponge your feet with cold vinegar and water,
change your socks every ten miles, and show me blisters after that, if
you can! You strap on your knapsack for the first time, and five minutes
afterwards feel an aching pain in the muscles at the back of your
neck--walk _on_, and the aching will walk _off_! How do we overcome our
first painful cuticular reminiscences of first getting on horseback?--by
riding again. Apply the same rule to carrying the knapsack, and be
assured of the same successful res