or Mr. G. Bird as he gratefully
gobbled a crushed one from my hand. Also it was dear of him the way he
raised his proud head and chuckled to his brides in the crate behind him
to come and get their share. It was pathetic the way he called and called
and they answered, until I finally stopped their mouths with ten other
dainties, so that he could consume his in peace. Even at that early stage
of our friendship I liked the Golden Bird, and perhaps it was just a wave
of prophetic psychology that made me feel so warmly towards the proud,
white young animal who was to lead me to--

So instead of the despair due the occasion, I was happy as I jogged slowly
out over the twenty long miles that stretched out like a silvery ribbon
dropped down upon the meadows and fields that separate the proud city of
Hayesville and the gray and green little old hamlet of Riverfield, which
nestles in a bend of the Cumberland River and sleeps time away under its
huge old oak and elm and hackberry trees, kept perpetually green by the
gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried green fronds around their winter
nakedness. As we rode slowly along, with a leisure I am sure all the
motor-car world has forgotten exists, the two old boys on the front seat
hummed and chuckled happily while I breathed in great gulps of a large,
meadow-sweet spring tang that seemed to fairly soak into the circulation of
my heart. The February day was cool with yet a kind of tender warmth in its
little gust of Southern wind that made me feel as does that brand of very
expensive Rhine wine which Albert at the Salemite on Forty-second Street in
New York keeps for Gale Beacon specially, and which makes Gale so furious
for you not to recognize, remember about, and comment upon at his really
wonderful dinners to bright and shining lights in art and literature.
Returning from New York to the Riverfield Road through the Harpeth Valley,
I also discovered upon the damsel Spring a hint of a soft young costume of
young green and purple and yellow that was as yet just a mist being draped
over her by the Southern wind.

"I feel like the fairy princess being driven into a land of enchantment,
Mr. Golden Bird," I remarked as I leaned back upon the soft old cushions
and took in the first leisurely breath of the air of the open road that my
lungs had ever inhaled: one simply gulps air when seated in a motor-car.
"It is all so simple and easy and--"

Just at this moment happened the first rea