ne hereabouts (Concord,
Massachusetts) practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at
least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen
would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy
the requisite leisure, freedom and independence which are the capital in
this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct
dispensation from Heaven to become a Walker. Ambulator nascitur non fit.
Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me,
walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to
lose themselves for half an hour in the woods."

Who is there who walks habitually, who does not know the man who tells
you of the walks he "used to take?" You have known him, say a dozen
years. During all that time, to your knowledge, his walks have
practically been limited by the distance to his office and back from the
ferry boat. When you urge him for perhaps the twentieth time, to essay
a tramp with you, he will say he would like to very much, but
unfortunately so-and-so renders it impossible. And then looking you in
the eye, he will tell you how much he enjoyed tramps he took, of twenty
or thirty miles--but that was before you knew him! As if a Walker with
a big "W," as Thoreau writes the word, would remain satisfied with the
memory of walks of twenty years ago!

I had heard of the "Marysville Buttes," as one has heard of Madagascar,
but their actual appearance on the landscape came as the greatest
surprise of the trip. As I first caught sight of them when within a
few miles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill. I could hardly
believe my eyes and thought of mirages; for those pointed, isolated
peaks rise precipitously from the floor of the Sacramento valley; in
fact, their bases are only a mile or two from the river. They have every
indication, even to the unscientific eye, of having been upheaved by
volcanic action. Perhaps that accounts for the uncanny impression they
impart.

A walk of twenty-one or two miles without food, in any kind of
weather, is apt to produce an aching void. My first efforts on reaching
Marysville were therefore directed to finding the sort of place where I
could eat in comfort. The emphasis which Robert Louis Stevenson employs
when upon this most important quest would be amusing were it not also
a vital problem in your own case. There is nothing humorous per se in
hunger or thirst; at any