te, it was their life, and the road was to them the
emblem of race solidarity--nay, more than the emblem, it was the means
to it. This is still the case with the country people, and as I live
among them I am coming to a realization of the meaning of the Road.

In the city one can never get just this. There are streets, of course,
but by their very multiplicity and complexity they lose their individual
impressiveness and are merged in that great whole, the City. One recoils
from them and takes refuge in the sense of one's own home.

But in the country there is just the Road. Recoil from it? One's heart
goes out to it. The road is a part of home, the part that reaches out to
our friends and draws them to us or brings us to them. It is our outdoor
clubhouse, it is the avenue of the Expected and the Unexpected, it is
the Home Road.

In a sense it does no more for us, and in some ways much less, than our
city streets do. Along these, too, our tradesmen's carts come to our
doors, along these our friends must fare as they arrive or depart; we
seek the streets at our outgoings and our incomings. But they are, after
all, strictly a means. We use them, but when we enter our homes we
forget them, or try to. Our individual share in the street is not large.
So much goes on and goes by that has only the most general bearing on
our interests that we cease to give it our attention at all. It is not
good form to watch the street, because it is not worth while. When
children's voices fly in at our windows, we assume that they are other
people's children, and they usually are. When we hear teams, we expect
them to go by, and they usually do. When we hear a cab door slam, we
take it for granted that it is before some other house, and usually it
is. And if, having nothing better to do, we perchance walk to the window
and glance out between the curtains, we are repaid by seeing nothing
interesting and by feeling a little shamefaced besides.

Not so in the country. What happens along the Road is usually our
intimate concern. Most of those who go by on it are our own
acquaintances and neighbors, and are interesting as _such_. The rest are
strangers, and interesting as such. For it is the rarity of the stranger
that gives him his piquancy.

And so in the country it is both good form and worth while to watch the
Road--to "keep an eye out," as they say. When Jonathan and I first came
to the farm, we were incased in a hard incrustation of city