For any form of locomotion less winged than skating and dancing the feet of American girls have hitherto seemed somehow unfitted by Nature.  There is every abstract reason why they should love walking, on this side of the Atlantic:  there is plenty of room for it, the continent is large; the exercise, moreover, brightens the eye and purifies the complexion, —­so the physiologists declare:  so that an English chemist classifies red cheeks as being merely oxygen in another form, and advises young ladies who wish for a pair to seek them where the roses get them, out-of-doors,—­upon which an impertinent damsel writes to ask “Punch” if they might not as well carry the imitation of the roses a little farther, and remain in their beds all the time?  But it is a lamentable fact, that walking, for the mere love of it, is a rare habit among our young women, and rarer probably in the country than in the city; it is uncommon to hear of one who walks habitually as much as two miles a day.  There are, of course, many exceptional instances:  I know maidens who love steep paths and mountain rains, like Wordsworth’s Louisa, and I have even heard of eight young ladies who walked from Andover to Boston, twenty-three miles, in six hours, and of two who did forty-five miles in two days.  Moreover, with our impulsive temperaments, a special object will always operate as a strong allurement.  A confectioner’s shop, for instance.  A camp somewhere in the suburbs, with dress-parades, and available lieutenants.  A new article of dress:  a real ermine cape may be counted as good for three miles a day, for the season.  A dearest friend within pedestrian distance:  so that it would seem well to plant a circle of delightful families just in the outskirts of every town, merely to serve as magnets.  Indeed, so desperate has the emergency become, that one might take even ladies’ hoops to be a secret device of Nature to secure more exercise for the occupants by compelling them thus to make the circuit of each other, as the two fat noblemen at the French court vindicated themselves from the charge of indolence by declaring that each promenaded twice round his friend every morning.

In view of this distaste for pedestrian exercise, it seems strange that the present revival of athletic exercises has not yet reached to horsemanship, the traditional type of all noble training, chevalerie, chivalry.  Certainly it is not for the want of horse-flesh, for never perhaps was so much of that costly commodity owned in this community; yet in New England you shall find private individuals who keep a half-dozen horses each, and livery-stables possessing fifty, and never a proper saddle-horse among them.  In some countries, riding does half the work of physical training, for both sexes; Sir Walter Scott, when at Abbotsford, never omitted his daily ride, and took his little daughter with him, from the time she could sit on horseback; but what New-England man, in purchasing a steed, selects with a view to a side-saddle?