minute, and finally she says, 'Well, I'll go for
your mother's sake, but not for yours.' So Henry, he went back home to
git somebody to look after his stock while he was gone, and the next
day he come for Emmeline, and they started to his mother's. It was
pretty near a day's journey, and there couldn't 'a' been a nicer trip
for a bride and groom, ridin' through the woods and over the hills
about the middle of October, the leaves jest turnin' and the weather
neither hot nor cold. I reckon, child, you don't know what it is to
make a journey that way. That's one o' the things folks miss by bein'
born nowadays instead of in the old times before there was any
railroads. I ricollect when they begun puttin' down the track for the
first railroad in this county. Uncle Jimmy Judson went to town on
purpose to see what it was like, and some o' the town folks explained
all about layin' the ties and the rails and showed him a picture o'
the cyars and the locomotive, and Uncle Jimmy looked at it a minute or
two, and then he shook his head and says he, 'None o' that sort o'
travelin' for me--shut up in a wooden box with a steam-engine in front
liable to blow up any minute, and nothin' but the mercy o' God to keep
them wheels from runnin' off this here narrer railin'.' Says he, 'Give
me a clear sky overhead, a good road underfoot, good company by my
side, and my old buggy and my old mare, and I can travel from sunup
to sundown and ask no odds o' the railroad.' And I reckon most old
people feel pretty much like Uncle Jimmy.

"I ricollect Parson Page sayin' once that the Christian's life was a
journey to heaven, and Sam Amos says, 'Yes, and generally when I start
out to go to a place, I want to get there as soon as possible; but
here's one time,' says he, 'when I wouldn't care if I never got to my
journey's end.' And that's the way it was with me when me and Abram'd
start out in our old rockaway for a day's travel through the country,
goin' to see his mother or mine. No matter how much I wanted to see
the folks I was goin' to, I'd feel as if I could keep on forever
ridin' through the thick woods or along the open road, the wind
blowin' in my face and the sun gittin' higher and higher towards noon
and then night comin' on before we'd be at our journey's end.

"I've heard Emmeline laugh many a time about that ride. Her mother
come out to the gate and put a basket o' lunch under the seat, and
says she, 'Now, Emmeline, you be a good gyirl an