"Among the advantages I have gathered from my
tour, I count as not the least the proficiency I have acquired in the gentle art of
strolling. I can now
perform a feat which I believe few
town-bred men can accomplish with ease or grace: to walk a good
English mile in
an hour. This is not quite as easy as it may
appear: the
first essential to success is that the
stroller must
free his mind from all
thoughts of time, ambition, over-drafts, assignments, leases, bonds,
agreements, formulae, loans, interests and
other such
tricks of commerce. He must be prepared to pass the time of day with
hawkers, beggars, parsons, squires, haughty
dames,
tramps,
unfortunates, and bottom dogs generally; and when he receives a surly
answer or a stony stare he must smile and
pass on. I consider it good form to be an
attentive listener to long, incoherent accounts of
fearful ailments told by garrulous
old ladies. Above all, the great
secret is sympathy. A
ramble in the proper frame of
mind can see a complex world in each
clear pool of a brook, or he can regard the
tumbling ocean as a mere moisture covering a portion of a whirling atom of
dust [...] This is a subject as fluent as the oak, and to set down all that is likely to arrest
attention would require the compass of an encyclopaedia. In due time a speed of one mile an hour is
found too rapid, and the resentful
stroller will
cry: 'Be hanged to this scurrying pace!! I am going to take my time!!"
Charles Hurst,
The Book of the English Oak, London: Lynwood & Co., 1911
