ough a parted curtain, or rarely a
smiling face; now and then some one looks out from a doorway to send a
greeting, or glances up from the garden or the well; but even without
these tokens I still have the sense of being noticed, and I find it
pleasant and companionable. In the city, when I go to see a friend, I
approach a house that gives no sign. I mount to a noncommittal vestibule
and push an impersonal button, and after the other necessary
preliminaries I find my friends. In the country as I drive up to the
house I notice curtains stirring, I hear voices, and before I have had
time to get out and find the hitch-rope every person in the house is
either at the gate or standing in the doorway. Our visit is begun before
we have left the Road, the hospitable, social Road. Such ways would
probably not do for the city. So much the worse for the city. The
country ways are best.

Everything that happens along the Road has the social touch. In the
city, orders are given by telephone, and when the delivery wagon comes,
it sweeps up with a rush, the boy seizes a basket and jumps out, runs to
the back door, shouts the name of the owner, slams down his goods, and
dashes back to the wagon, with a crisp "Git-up!" to the well-trained
horse, who starts forward while his driver is still mounting to his
seat.

Not so in the country. The wagon draws peacefully out to the side of the
Road, and the horse falls to nibbling grass if he is unchecked, or to
browsing on my rosebushes if he is not. If it is the grocer's wagon, the
boy comes around to the back porch and we discuss what supplies will
probably be needed by the time of his next visit. Incidentally, we talk
about weather and crops and woodchucks and trout, or bass or partridges,
according to the season. If it is the meat cart or the fish wagon, I
seize a platter and go out, the back flap of the cart is lifted up, I
step under its shade and peer in, considering what is offered me and
deciding what I will have plucked out for me to carry back to the house.

Besides the routine visitors, there are others--peddlers with wonderful
collections of things to sell (whole clothing shops or furniture stores
some of them bring with them), peddlers with books, peddlers with
silver, peddlers with jewelry. In the course of a few months one is
offered everything from shoe-strings to stoves. There are men who want
to buy, too,--buyers of old iron, of old rags, of old rubber.
"Anny-ting, anny-ting