COUNTRY LIFE
HAs this generation, or a good part of it, forgotten how to walk? Certainly our idea of distance has dwindled, in some cases, to vanishing point! This query and lamentation are suggested by a re-reading of the most characteristic of Dickens' Christmas celebrations—and some people argue that Dickens invented the extreme joviality of Christmas. It is there written : " At dinner they met again, after a five-and-twenty-mile walk, undertaken by the males at Wardle's recommendation, to get rid of the effects of wine at breakfast." The males arc not depicted as a peculiarly athletic group ; but there is no suggestion that the length of the walk was exceptional. Not only males used to indulge in such strolls. On looking back at Lamb's essay on Mackery End, a district very familiar to me, I calculate that he and his sister covered very nearly as great a distance as Wardle's guests. I suppose one reason why a six-hour trudge sounds to us so outrageous is that we have distributed those enormous meals. Between breakfast and dinner we nave interpolated luncheon and tea, perhaps even an " eleven-o'clock." Well, walking, still traditional on Christmas Day (as The Times has reminded us, with a surprising omission of the Pickwick passage), is said by modern doctors to pump lymph about the body as no other mode of motion ; but our many little meals are perhaps a compensation for the lack of twenty-mile strolls.
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