w days, after the first
day or two it seemed as though we had been out on the road for weeks; as
though, indeed, we had spent our lives in the open air; and it needed no
more than our brief experience for us to realize what one so often reads
of those who do actually live their lives out-of-doors, gypsies, sailors,
cowboys and the like--how intolerable to them is a roof, and how
literally they gasp for air and space in the confined walls of cities.

Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river--

There's the life for a man like me,
There's the life forever.

The only time of the day when our spirits began to fail was toward its
close, when the shadows of supper and bed in some inclement inn began to
fall over us, and we confessed to each other a positive sense of fear in
our evening approach to the abodes of men. After a long, safe, care-free
day, in the company of liberating prospects and sweet-breathed winds,
there seemed a curious lurking menace in the most harmless village, as
well as an unspeakable irksomeness in its inharmonious interruption of
our mood. To emerge, saturated, body and soul, with the sweet scents and
sounds and sights of a day's tramp, out of the meditative leafiness and
spiritual temper of natural things, into the garishly lit street of some
little provincial town, animated with the clumsy mirth of silly young
country folks, aping so drearily the ribaldry, say, of Elmira, is a
painful anticlimax to the spirit. Had it only been real Summer, instead
of Indian Summer, we should, of course, have been real gypsies, and made
our beds under the stars, but, as it was, we had no choice. Or, had we
been walking in Europe ... yes, I am afraid the truth must out, and that
our real dread at evening was--the American country hotel. With the best
wish in the world, it is impossible to be enthusiastic over the American
country hotel. How ironically the kindly old words used to come floating
to me out of Shakespeare each evening as the shadows fell, and the lights
came out in the windows--"to take mine ease at mine inn;" and assuredly
it was on another planet that Shenstone wrote:

_Whoe'er hath travelled life's dull round,
Whate'er his fortunes may have been,
Must sigh to think he still has found
His warmest welcome at an inn_.

Had Shenstone been writing in an American country hotel, his tune would
probably have been more after this fashion: "A wonderful day has come to
a dreary end in the