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they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some
rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh
hour, or four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day,
when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the
daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,--I
confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing
of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to
shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years
almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of--sitting
there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock
in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning
courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully
at this hour in the afternoon over against one's self whom you have
known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound
by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say
between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning
papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general
explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of
antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an
airing-and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand
it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not
STAND it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking
the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste
past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such
an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about
these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I
appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never
turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the
slumberers.
No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with
it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor
occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the
evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before
sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking
exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours--as
the Swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and
adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the
springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health,
when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast
which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant
to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but
his study is out of doors."
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce
a certain roughness of character--will cause a thicker cuticle to grow
over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and
hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their
delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may
produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin,
accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps
we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our
intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown
on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion
rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will
fall off fast enough--that the natural remedy is to be found in the
proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer,
thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine
in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with
finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the
heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality
that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and
callus of experience.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become
of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects
of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to
themselves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves and
walks of Platanes," where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos
open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the
woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens
that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there
in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning
occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that
I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run
in my head and I am not where my body is--I am out of my senses. In
my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the
woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself,
and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what
are called good works--for this may sometimes happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have
walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have
not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness,
and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking
will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single
farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the
dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony
discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle
of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the
threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite
familiar to you.