Exercise: Then and Now

• From The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1836-37): "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 the wine at breakfast."

• From The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough: "As robust a walker as any of them was James Fenimore Cooper, who in earlier years had been known to walk from New York City all the way to his country home in Westchester County, a distance of twenty-five miles. No sooner had Cooper settled in Paris in 1826 than he decided to make the entire circumference of the city on foot, taking with him an old friend, a retired American naval captain with the memorable name of Melancthon T. Woolsey, under whom Cooper had once served at sea."