and a good deal of placid gazing on scenes that ennoble his thoughts and make his imagination more lofty.  One of the mountain-climbing enthusiasts could not contrive to break his neck in Europe, so, with a gallantry worthy of a better cause, he went to South America and scaled Chimborazo.  He could not quite break his neck even in the Andes, but he no doubt turned many athletic friends yellow with envy.  Yet another went to the Caucasus, and found so many charming and almost deadly perils there that he wants numbers of people to go out and share his raptures.

The same barren competitive spirit breaks out in other directions.  Men will run across the North Sea in a five-ton boat, though there are scores of big and comfortable steamers to carry them:  they are cramped in their tiny craft; they can get no exercise; their limbs are pained; they undergo a few days of cruel privation—­and all in order that they may tell how they bore a drenching in a cockboat.  On the roads in our own England we see the same disposition made manifest.  The bicyclist tears along with his head low and his eyes fixed just ahead of the tyre of his front wheel; he does not enjoy the lovely panorama that flits past him, he has no definite thought, he only wants to cover so many miles before dark; save for the fresh air that will whistle past him, thrilling his blood, he might as well be rolling round on a cinder track in some running-ground.  But the walker—­the long-distance walker—­is the most trying of all to the average leisurely and meditative citizen.  He fits himself out with elaborate boots and ribbed stockings; he carries resin and other medicaments for use in case his feet should give way; his knapsack is unspeakably stylish, and he posts off like a spirited thoroughbred running a trial.  His one thought is of distances; he gloats over a milestone which informs him that he is going well up to five and a half miles per hour, and he fills up his evening by giving spirited but somewhat trying accounts of the pace at which he did each stage of his pilgrimage.  In the early morning he is astir, not because he likes to see the diamond dew on the lovely trees or hear the chant of the birds as they sing of love and thanksgiving—­he wants to make a good start, so that he may devour even more of the way than he did the day before.  In any one lane that he passes through there are scores of sights that offer a harvest to the quiet eye; but our insatiable athlete does not want to see anything in particular until the sight of his evening steak fills him with rapture.  If the most patient and urbane of men were shut up with one of these tremendous fellows during a storm of rain, he would pray for deliverance before a couple of hours went by; for the competitive athlete’s intelligence seems to settle in his calves, and he refers to his legs for all topics which he kindly conceives to possess human interest.  Of course the swift walker may become a useful citizen should we ever have war; he will display the same qualities that were shown by the sturdy Bavarians and Brandenburgers who bore those terrible marches in 1870 and swept MacMahon into a deadly trap by sheer endurance and speed of foot; but he is not the ideal companion.