Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/180

154 when walking has been inculcated into the creed of all well-developed men and women, with present-day costumes adapted for outdoor life, his words have a ring of prophecy as well as remonstrance, while to his contemporaries they seemed merely defiant of conventionalities. In a burst of whimsicality, doubtless caused by some tiresome visitor, he wrote on a journal page, included in "Autumn,"—"I do not know how to entertain those who cannot take long walks. The first thing that suggests itself is to get a horse to draw them, and that brings me at once in contact with the stables and dirty harness, and I do not get over my ride for a long while. I give up my forenoon to them, and get along pretty well, the very elasticity of the air and the promise of the day abetting me; but they are heavy as dumplings by mid-afternoon. If they can't walk, why won't they take an honest nap in the afternoon and let me go? But when two o'clock comes, they alarm me by an evident disposition to sit. In the midst of the most glorious Indian summer afternoon, there they sit, breaking your chairs and wearing out the house, with their backs to the light, taking no note of the lapse of time." With special force, he urged elimination of all sordid or anxious thoughts when we are walking. The primal aim should be not exercise, though that is second, but rather pure affinity