Ocasionally on the sidewalk, amid the dapper, swiftly moving, high-heeled boots and gaiters, Icatch a glimpse of the naked human foot. Nimbly it scuffs along, the toes spread, the sides flatten, the heel protrudes; it grasps the curbing, or bends to the form of the uneven surfaces, -a thingsensuous and alive, that seems to take cognizance of whatever it touches or passes. How primitiveand uncivil it looks in such company, -a real barbarian in the parlor! We are so unused to thehuman anatomy, to simple, unadorned nature, that it looks a little repulsive; but it is beautiful for allthat. Though it be a black foot and an unwashed foot, it shall be exalted. It is a thing of life amidleather, a free spirit amid cramped, a wild bird amid caged, an athlete amid consumptives. It is thesymbol of my order, the Order of Walkers. That unhampered, vitally playing piece of anatomy is thetype of the pedestrian, man returned to first principles, in direct contact and intercourse with theearth and the elements, his faculties unsheathed, his mind plastic, his body toughened, his heartlight, his soul dilated; while those cramped and distorted members in the calf and kid are theunfortunate wretches doomed to carriages and cushions.I am not going to advocate the disuse of boots and shoes, or the abandoning of the improvedmodes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show howall the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits areever looking out for a chance to ride.When I see the discomforts that able-bodied American men will put up with rather than go a mileor half a mile on foot, the abuses they will tolerate and encourage, crowding the street car on a littlefall in the temperature or the appearance of an inch or two of snow, packing up to overflowing, dangling to the straps, treading on each other's toes, breathing each other's breaths, crushing thewomen and children, hanging by tooth and nail to a square inch of the platform, imperiling theirlimbs and killing the horses, -I think the commonest tramp in the street has good reason tofelicitate himself on his rare privilege of going afoot. Indeed, a race that neglects or despises thisprimitive gift, that fears the touch of the soil, that has no footpaths, no community of ownership inthe land which they imply, that warns off the walker as a trespasser, that knows no way but thehighway, the carriage-way, that forgets the stile, the foot-bridge, that even ignores the rights of thepedestrian in the public road, providing no escape for him but in the ditch or up the bank, is in a fairway to far more serious degene