My Notion of a Walking Companion
Of all small miseries, an uncongenial walking companion is the most annoying. Some people take a walk as they would study the multiplication table. It is a necessary performance, to be got over as soon as possible. I am not alluding to that class of human oyster, but to those who, after close application, or the exhausting wear and fret of everyday life, feel as though the four walls about them were gradually contracting, and their chance for breath growing fainter and fainter; to whom fresh air and the blue sky are as necessary as is dew and sunshine to flowers; and like them, without which, they as certainly droop and die;—such will understand what I mean by that misused term—a walk. Not a dawdle, not a feminine “calling” tour; nor an errand of any sort, for any purpose under heaven, that can be construed into business; but a dreamy lounge, irrespective of anything but the cool feel of the air on the heated temples, and the great, ceaseless, murmuring wave of life beating against the shore of time, bearing you and others on its bosom wheresoever God willeth. People pass you like moving shadows, you hear the pleasant hum of their voices, but do not know in your somnambulistic mood whether they are familiar faces or not. You only thank God for unfettered limbs, and fresh air, and motion; beyond that, for the time being, you desire to know nothing. Ah, then—to be unexpectedly linked to some human fidget! Whose limbs jerk this way and that, as if they were pulled by invisible wires; who goes first fast, then slow; then pulls you up with a short jerk to look at something; who bothers you with infinitesimal small talk; who ceaselessly interlards inquiries which chain you remorselessly to the tug-boat of his or her ideas, without leave of mental absence for one reprieving moment; and all this very likely accompanied with the most friendly and amiable intentions on the part of your entertainer (?). To say “No” and “Yes” recklessly—and laugh in the wrong place, and go home a million times more weary than when you started, beside feeling that you have hopelessly excluded yourself from the list of sane human beings—that’s what I call misery.
But, ah! the ecstatic bliss of walking with one who thinks with you, as he moves dreamily on without speech—to be free to utter or to be silent, and no offence given or taken. To be allowed to wander leagues off, without fear of being rudely jerked back to time, at any unpropitious moment.
To turn this corner and that, by some mutual magnetic understanding, that you smile at afterward, when you come to think of it, as strangely funny and agreeable. To reach your own door-step as rested and refreshed, and with as cool and tranquil a brow, as if your own mother had sung you to sleep with the old-time nursery lullaby. To go back with fresh heart and spirit, to take up your burden of duty where weary nature had lain it hopelessly down. That’s my kind of “walk.”
There are certain persons whom to meet is like opening the window of a close apartment on a delicious June day. The first breath is an inspiration. You throw back your locks from your heated forehead, and your weary eyes, and ask nothing but to sit down and let this soother minister to you. All your cares, and frets, one by one creep away, and a new life and vigor seem infused into every nerve and muscle. You are not the same creature that you were ten minutes before. You are ready after all to do valiant battle with life, though you had supposed yourself quite surrendered to its everyday, petty, and harassing tyrant necessities. Exuberant animal strength must needs carry with it hopefulness and courage; and they whose nerves have been strained and weakened by past trouble, welcome the breezy, fresh influence of such, like Heaven’s own dew and sunshine. It is a tonic, the blessing of which the unconscious giver knows not how to appreciate perhaps, but oh how invaluable to the receiver! A soulful face, an exultant word—a light, springing step! We raise our weary eyes first in wonder, then in admiration; and the sympathetic chord thus struck—the brow clears, the eyes brighten, and life seems—not the curse we morbidly thought it—but the blessing God intended it.