n--I came, within a
mile--to the wide white turnpike--the Great Road.

Now, I usually prefer the little roads, the little, unexpected, curving,
leisurely country roads. The sharp hills, the pleasant deep valleys, the
bridges not too well kept, the verdure deep grown along old fences, the
houses opening hospitably at the very roadside, all these things I love.
They come to me with the same sort of charm and flavour, only vastly
magnified, which I find often in the essays of the older writers--those
leisurely old fellows who took time to write, REALLY write. The
important thing to me about a road, as about life--and literature, is
not that it goes anywhere, but that it is livable while it goes. For
if I were to arrive--and who knows that I ever shall arrive?--I think I
should be no happier than I am here.

Thus I have commonly avoided the Great White Road--the broad, smooth
turnpike--rock-bottomed and rolled by a State--without so much as a
loitering curve to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am to laugh
over, nor a sinful hill to test your endurance--not so much as a dreamy
valley! It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way directly from some
particular place to some other particular place and from time to time a
motor-car shoots in at one end of it and out at the other, leaving its
dust to settle upon quiet travellers like me.

Thus to-day when I came to the turnpike I was at first for making
straight across it and taking to the hills beyond, but at that very
moment a motor-car whirled past me as I stood there and a girl with a
merry face waved her hand at me. I lifted my hat in return--and as
I watched them out of sight I felt a curious new sense of warmth and
friendliness there in the Great Road.

"These are just people, too," I said aloud--"and maybe they really like
it!"

And with that I began laughing at myself, and at the whole, big,
amazing, interesting world. Here was I pitying them for their benighted
state, and there were they, no doubt, pitying me for mine!

And with that pleasant and satisfactory thought in my mind and a song in
my throat I swung into the Great Road.

"It doesn't matter in the least," said I to myself, "whether a man takes
hold of life by the great road or the little ones so long as he takes
hold."

And oh, it was a wonderful day! A day with movement in it; a day that
flowed! In every field the farmers were at work, the cattle fed widely
in the meadows, and the Great Road