noons of the week, blocks the lower end of
that variegated thoroughfare.

Such exclusiveness lays the Auto-Comrade open, of course, to the
charge of inhospitality. But "is not he hospitable," asks Thoreau,
"who entertains good thoughts?" Personally, I think he is. And I
believe that this sort of hospitality does more to make the world
worth living in than much conventional hugging to your bosom of
porcupines whose language you do not speak, yet with whom it is
embarrassing to keep silence.

If the Auto-Comrade mislikes the porcupine, however, the feeling is
returned with exorbitant interest. The alleged failings of
auto-comradeship have always drawn grins, jokes, fleers, and nudges,
from the auto-comradeless. It is time the latter should know that the
joke is really on him; for he is the most forlorn of mankind. The
other is never at a loss. He is invulnerable, being one whom "destiny
may not surprise nor death dismay." But the porcupine is liable at any
moment to be deserted by associates who are bored by his sharp, hollow
quills. He finds himself the victim of a paradox which decrees that
the hermit shall "find his crowds in solitude" and never be alone; but
that the flocker shall every now and then be cast into inner darkness,
where shall be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

The laugh is on the porcupine; but the laugh turns almost into a tear
when one stops to realize the nature of his plight. Why, the poor
wretch is actually obliged to be near someone else in order to enjoy a
sense of vitality! In other words, he needs somebody else to do his
living for him. He is a vicarious citizen of the world, holding his
franchise only by courtesy of Tom, Dick, and Harry. All the same, it
is rather hard to pity him very profoundly while he continues to feel
quite as contemptuously superior as he usually does. For, the contempt
of the average porcupine for pals of the Auto-Comrade is akin to the
contempt which the knights of chivalry felt for those paltry beings
who were called clerks because they possessed the queer, unfashionable
accomplishment of being able to read and write.

I remember that the loudest laugh achieved by a certain class-day
orator at college came when he related how the literary guy and the
tennis-player were walking one day in the woods, and the literary guy
suddenly exclaimed: "Ah, leave me, Louis! I would be alone." Even
apart from the stilted language in which the orator clothed the
thought of the