Chapter XII: "how to Do It."

The following advice by Rev. Edward Everett Hale is so good that I have appropriated it. You will find more good advice in the same book.[27]

"First, never walk before breakfast. If you like
you may make two breakfasts, and take a mile or
two between; but be sure to eat something before
you are on the road.

"Second, do not walk much in the middle of the
day. It is dusty and hot then; and the landscape
has lost its special glory. By ten o'clock you
ought to have found some camping-ground for the
day,--a nice brook running through a grove; a
place to draw, or paint, or tell stories, or read
them or write them; a place to make waterfalls and
dams, to sail chips, or build boats; a place to
make a fire and a cup of tea for the oldsters.
Stay here till four in the afternoon, and then
push on in the two or three hours which are left
to the sleeping-place agreed upon. Four or five
hours on the road is all you want in each day.
Even resolute idlers, as it is to be hoped you all
are on such occasions, can get eight miles a day
out of that; and that is enough for a true
walking-party. Remember all along that you are not
running a race with the railway-train. If you
were, you would be beaten certainly; and the less
you think you are, the better. You are travelling
in a method of which the merit is that it is not
fast, and that you see every separate detail of
the glory of the world. What a fool you are, then,
if you tire yourself to death, merely that you may
say that you did in ten hours what the locomotive
would gladly have finished in one, if by that
effort you have lost exactly the enjoyment of
nature and society that you started for!"

The advice to rest in the heat of the day is good for very hot weather; young people, however, are too impatient to follow it unless there is an apparent necessity. The feeling at twelve o'clock that you have yet to walk as far as you have come is not so pleasant as that of knowing you have all the afternoon for rest. For this reason nearly every one will finish the walk as soon as possible; still Mr. Hale's plan is a good one--the best for very hot weather.

STILL ANOTHER WAY TO TRAVEL.

Mr. Hale also tells an amusing story of his desire when young to sail down the Connecticut River; but he was dissuaded from doing so when the chance finally came, by people who thought the road was the only place to travel in. And now he is sorry he did not sail.

The reading of his story brings to mind a similar experience that I had when young, and it is now one of the keen regrets of my manhood, that I likewise was laughed out of a boyish plan that would have given me untold pleasure and profit had it been carried out. I loved to walk, and I wanted to see the towns within a circuit of twenty or thirty miles of home; but I could not afford to pay hotel-bills, and I was not strong enough to carry a camping-outfit. But I had an old cart, strong and large enough to hold all I should need. I could load it with the same food that I should eat if I staid at home; could wear my old clothes, take my oilcloth overcoat, an axe, frying-pan, pail, and a borrowed tent and poles; and I would learn the county by heart before vacation was over, and not cost my father a cent more than if I staid at home. Oh, why didn't I go! Simply because I was laughed out of it. I was told that people did not travel in that way; I should be arrested; the boys would hoot at and stone me; the men would set their dogs on me; I should be driven out of my camping-place; thieves would steal my seventy-five cent cart; dogs would eat up my stock of food; and the first man who overtook me would tell the people that a crazy boy from Portland was coming along the road dragging a baby-wagon, whereupon every woman would leave her kitchen, and every man his field, to see and laugh at me. But, above all, the thing would be known in our neighborhood, and the boys and girls would join in their abuse of the county explorer.

That was the end of it; the being made sport of by _my own friends_, and hearing the _small boys in our street_ sing out "How's your cart?" and to be known all through life perhaps as "_one-horse John_"--the punishment would be too severe.

But, my young friends, I made a great mistake; and I want to caution you _not_ to surrender to any such nonsense as I did. If you wish to go to sea in a skiff, it is well to give in to a fisherman's advice to stay at home, for he can assure you that winds and waves will be the death of you; but if you have a good hand-wagon, and are willing to stand a few taunts, by all means go on your walk, and pull your wagon after you. You will learn a lesson in independence that will be of value to you, if you learn nothing else.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] How to Do It. Published by Roberts Brothers, Boston.