idn't care naught
about money, but if there was ever a gentleman alive, he was one."

Barney seemed much saddened when I told him that Mr. Thoreau had been
dead a dozen years. On parting, he asked me to come out some time to
Freedom Centre, and to spend a night with him. He had n't much of a
room to offer me, but there was always a place in his house for a
friend of Mr. Thoreau. Such is the feeling of this guild of lovers of
Thoreau, and some of you may come to belong to it.

Here is a test for you. Thoreau says: "I long ago lost a hound, a bay
horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the
travelers I have spoken to regarding them, describing their tracks, and
what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who have heard the
hound and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear
behind the cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they
had lost them themselves."

Now, if any of you, in your dreams, have heard the horse, or seen the
sunshine on the dove's wings, you may join in the search. If not, you
may close the book, for Thoreau has not written for you.

This Thoreau guild is composed, as he himself says, "of knights of a
new, or, rather, an old order, not equestrians or chevaliers, not
Ritters, or riders, but walkers, a still more ancient and honorable
class, I trust."

"I have met," he says, "but one or two persons who understand the art
of walking; who had a genius for sauntering, which word is beautifully
derived from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages
and asked charity, under pretense of going '_a la Sainte Terre_'--a
Sainte-terrer, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in
their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but
they who go there are saunterers, in the good sense. Every walk is a
kind of crusade preached by some Peter the Hermit within us, to go
forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

"It is true that we are but faint-hearted crusaders, who undertake no
persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours,
and come round again at evening to the old hearthside from which we set
out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on
the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never
to return, prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to
our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave