Walking: Large Print

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 ?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.