Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character,—­will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch.  So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions.  Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin.  But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough,—­that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience.  There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts.  The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness.  That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods:  what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?  Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods.  “They planted groves and walks of Platanes,” where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air.  Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither.  I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.  In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.  But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village.  The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is,—­I am out of my senses.  In my walks I would fain return to my senses.  What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?  I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works,—­for this may sometimes happen.

My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them.  An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon.  Two or three hours’ walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see.  A single farm-house which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey.  There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life.  It will never become quite familiar to you.