"With my tea and this," said he, "I can go over the United States. Good
bread and sweet butter I can always get at your farm-houses, and I often
walk fifty miles together."
We looked and spoke our New-English astonishment. In our part of the
world nobody walked anywhere. Everybody, however poor, had a wagon, if
not a chaise; and he must be miserable indeed who did not own at least
one horse. Nobody in his sober senses demeaned himself to walking.
Perhaps it was the climate. Perhaps our fathers instituted the custom,
to be as unlike the British as possible,--as they did of making their
houses like lanterns, to show they had no window-tax to pay.
This man's hearty voice and healthy frame, charged, as it seemed, with
fresh air, jollity, and strength, made us think better of walking. We
looked at his six feet of height, his broad chest, and his firmly knit
limbs, and fancied how Antaeus gained supernatural vigor from natural
contact: he trod the earth with a loving and free step, as a child
approaches and caresses his mother.
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