Walking

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understoodthe art of Walking that is of taking walks-who had a genius so to speak forsauntering which word is beautifully derived from idle people who roved aboutthe country in the Middle Ages and asked charity under pretense of going à laSainte Terre to the Holy Land till the children exclaimed There goes a SainteTerrer a Saunterer a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in theirwalks as they pretend are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do gothere are saunterers in the good sense such as I mean. Some however wouldderive the word from sans terre without land or a home which therefore in thegood sense will mean having no particular home but equally at home everywhere.For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all thetime may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer in the good sense is nomore vagrant than the meandering river which is all the while sedulously seekingthe shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first which indeed is the mostprobable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade preached by some Peter theHermit in us to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of theInfidels.