FullReads

Perhaps I have tarried too long over Vachel; but I have set down his theories of vagabonding because many walkers will find them interesting. “The Handy Guide for Beggars” will leave you footsore but better for the exercise. And when the fascinating story of American literature in this decade (1910-20) is finally written, there will be a happy and well-merited corner in it for a dusty but “neat, truthful, and civil” figure from Springfield, Illinois.

A good pipeful of prose to solace yourself withal, about sunset on a lonely road, is that passage on “Lying Awake at Night” to be found in “The Forest,” by Stewart Edward White. Major White is one of the best friends the open-air walker has, and don’t forget it!

The motors have done this for us at least, that as they have made the highways their own beyond dispute, walking will remain the mystic and private pleasure of the secret and humble few. For us the byways, the footpaths, and the pastures will be sanctified and sweet. Thank heaven there are still gentle souls uncorrupted by the victrola and the limousine. In our old trousers and our easy shoes, with pipe and stick, we can do our fifteen miles between lunch and dinner, and glorify the ways of God to man.

And sometimes, about two o’clock of an afternoon (these spells come most often about half an hour after lunch), the old angel of peregrination lifts himself up in me, and I yearn and wamble for a season afoot. When a blue air is moving keenly through bare boughs this angel is most vociferous. I gape wanly round the lofty citadel where I am pretending to earn the Monday afternoon envelope. The filing case, thermostat, card index, typewriter, automatic telephone: these ingenious anodynes avail me not. Even the visits of golden nymphs, sweet ambassadors of commerce, who rustle in and out of my room with memoranda, mail, manuscripts, aye, even these lightfoot figures fail to charm. And the mind goes out to the endless vistas of streets, roads, fields, and rivers that summon the wanderer with laughing voice. Somewhere a great wind is scouring the hillsides; and once upon a time a man set out along the Great North Road to walk to Royston in the rain….

Grant us, O Zeus! the tingling tremour of thigh and shank that comes of a dozen sturdy miles laid underheel. Grant us “fine walking on the hills in the direction of the sea”; or a winding road that tumbles down to some Cotswold village. Let an inn parlour lie behind red curtains, and a table be drawn toward the fire. Let there be a loin of cold beef, an elbow of yellow cheese, a tankard of dog’s nose. Then may we prop our Bacon’s Essays against the pewter and study those mellow words: “Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.” Haec studio, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.