It is another proof of how walking brings out the true character of a man.  The devil never yet asked his victims to take a walk with him.  You will not be long in finding your companion out.  All disguises will fall away from him.  As his pores open his character is laid bare.  His deepest and most private self will come to the top.  It matters little with whom you ride, so he be not a pickpocket; for both of you will, very likely, settle down closer and firmer in your reserve, shaken down like a measure of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds.  But walking is a more vital copartnership; the relation is a closer and more sympathetic one, and you do not feel like walking ten paces with a stranger without speaking to him.

Hence the fastidiousness of the professional walker in choosing or admitting a companion, and hence the truth of a remark of Emerson, that you will generally fare better to take your dog than to invite your neighbor.  Your cur-dog is a true pedestrian, and your neighbor is very likely a small politician.  The dog enters thoroughly into the spirit of the enterprise; he is not indifferent or preoccupied; he is constantly sniffing adventure, laps at every spring, looks upon every field and wood as a new world to be explored, is ever on some fresh trail, knows something important will happen a little farther on, gazes with the true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot or whatever the road finds it good to be there,—­in short, is just that happy, delicious, excursive vagabond that touches one at so many points, and whose human prototype in a companion robs miles and leagues of half their power to fatigue.

Persons who find themselves spent in a short walk to the market or the post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that their pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall down from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a kind of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough to regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed.  If I am loaded to carry only one mile and am compelled to walk three, I generally feel more fatigue than if I had walked six under the proper impetus of preadjusted resolution.  In other words, the will or corporeal mainspring, whatever it be, is capable of being wound up to different degrees of tension, so that one may walk all day nearly as easy as half that time, if he is prepared beforehand.  He knows his task, and he measures and distributes his powers accordingly.  It is for this reason that an unknown road is always a long road.  We cannot cast the mental eye along it and see the end from the beginning.  We are fighting in the dark, and cannot take the measure of our foe.  Every step must be preordained and provided for in the mind.  Hence also the fact that to vanquish one mile in the woods seems equal to compassing three in the open country.  The furlongs are ambushed, and we magnify them.