Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

252 Walking Tours
he is (as, indeed, throughout the essay) in
the theory of walking tours. He is none of
your athletic men in purple stockings, who
walk their fifty miles a day : three hours*
march is his ideal. And then he must have
a winding road, the epicure !
Yet there is one thing I object to in these
words of his, one thing in the great master's
practice that seems to me not wholly wise.
I do not approve of that leaping and running.
Both of these hurry the respiration ; they
both shake up the brain out of its glorious
open-air confusion ; and they both break the
pace. Uneven walking is not so agreeable
to the body, and it distracts and irritates the
mind. Whereas, when once you have fallen
into an equable stride, it requires no conscious
thought from you to keep it up, and yet it
prevents you from thinking earnestly of
anything else. Like knitting, like the work
of a copying clerk, it gradually neutralises
and sets to sleep the serious activity of the
mind. We can think of this or that, lightly
and laughingly, as a child thinks, or as we