Walking-Stick Papers | Page 9

sanctum by a succession of richly
clothed attendants. And he learns, it may be, that fishing in Chesapeake
Bay is so poor that some of the "fish factories" may decide to shut
down. Acid phosphate, it is said, is ruling at $13 f.o.b. Baltimore.
And so the fish reporter enters upon the last lap of his rounds. Through,
perhaps, the narrow, crooked lane of Pine Street he passes, to come out
at length upon a scene set for a sea tale. Here would a lad, heir to vast
estates in Virginia, be kidnapped and smuggled aboard to be sold a
slave in Africa. This is Front Street. A white ship lies at the foot of it.
Cranes rise at her side. Tugs, belching smoke, bob beyond. All about
are ancient warehouses, redolent of the Thames, with steep roofs and
sometimes stairs outside, and with tall shutters, a crescent-shaped hole
in each. There is a dealer in weather-vanes. Other things dealt in
hereabout are these: chronometers, "nautical instruments," wax gums,
cordage and twine, marine paints, cotton wool and waste, turpentine,
oils, greases, and rosin. Queer old taverns, public houses, are here, too.
Why do not their windows rattle with a "Yo, ho, ho"?
There is an old, old house whose business has been fish oil within the
memory of men. And here is another. Next, through Water Street, one
comes in search of the last word on salt fish. Now the air is filled with
gorgeous smell of roasting coffee. Tea, coffee, sugar, rice, spices, bags

and bagging here have their home. And there are haughty bonded
warehouses filled with fine liquors. From his white cabin at the top of a
venerable structure comes the dean of the salt-fish business. "Export
trade fair," he says; "good demand from South America."

II
ON GOING A JOURNEY
One of the pleasantest things in the world is "going a journey"--but few
know it now. It isn't every one that can go a journey. No doubt one that
owns an automobile cannot go. The spirit of the age has got him fast.
Begoggled and with awful squawks, feverish, exultant, ignorant, he is
condemned to hoot over the earth. Thus the wealthy know nothing of
journeys, for they must own motors. Vain people and envious people
and proud people cannot go, because the wealthy do not. Silly people
do not know enough to go. The lazy cannot, because of their laziness.
The busy hang themselves with business. The halt nor the aged, alas!
cannot go. In fine, only such as are whole anywise and pure in heart
can go a journey, and they are the blessed.
"We arrive at places now, but we" (most of us) "travel no more." The
way a journey is gone, to come to the point, is walking. Asking many
folks' pardon, to tear through the air in an open car, deafened,
hilariously muddled by the rush and roar of wind, is to drive
observation from the mind: it is to be, in a manner, complacently,
intellectually unconscious; is to drink an enjoyment akin to that of the
shooters of the chute, or that got on the very latest of this sort of engine
of human amusement called the "Hully-Gee-Whizz," a pleasure of the
ignorant, metaphorically, a kind of innocents' rot-gut whiskey. The way
a journey is gone, which is walking, is a wine, a mellow claret,
stimulating to observation, to thought, to speculation, to the flow of talk,
gradually, decently warming the blood. Rightly taken (which manner
this paper attempts to set forth), walking is among the pleasures of the
mind. It is a call-boy to wit, a hand-maiden to cultivation. Sufficiently
indulged in, it will make a man educated, a wit, a poet, an ironist, a

philosopher, a gentleman, a better Christian (not to dwell upon
improving his digestion and prolonging his life). And, too, like true
Shandyism "it opens the heart and the lungs." Whoso hath ears, let him
hear! Once and for all, if the mad world did but know it, the best, the
most exquisite automobile is a walking-stick; and one of the finest
things in life is going a journey with it.
No one, though (this is the first article to be observed), should ever go a
journey with any other than him with whom one walks arm in arm, in
the evening, the twilight, and, talking (let us suppose) of men's given
names, agrees that if either should have a son he shall be named after
the other. Walking in the gathering dusk, two and two, since the world
began, there have always been young men who have time to one
another plighted their troth. If one is not still one of these, then, in the
sense here used, journeys are over for him. What is