Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

WALKING TOURS
prepare all day for the evening, and all evening for
the next day. And, above all, it is here that your
overwalker fails of comprehension. His heart rises
against those who drink their cura^oa in liqueur-
glasses, when he himself can swill it in a brown
John. He will not believe that the flavour is more
delicate in the smaller dose. He will not beheve
that to walk this unconscionable distance is merely
to stupefy and brutalise himself, and come to his
inn, at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits,
and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. Not
for him the mild luminous evening of the temperate
walker ! He has nothing left of man but a physical
need for bedtime and a double nightcap ; and even
his pipe, if he be a smoker, will be savourless and
disenchanted. It is the fate of such an one to take
twice as much trouble as is needed to obtain happi-
ness, and miss the happiness in the end ; he is the
man of the proverb, in short, who goes farther and
fares worse.
Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour
should be gone upon alone. If you go in a company,
or even in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in
anything but name ; it is something else, and more
in the nature of a picnic. A walking tour should
be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the
essence ; because you should be able to stop and go
on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes
you ; and because you must have your own pace,
and neither trot alongside a champion walker nor
mince in time with a girl. And then you must be
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