ttle cemeteries as I pass.
Symbols, you say? Why, they're the very stuff of life. If you cannot see
life here in the wide road, you will never see it at all.

Well, I saw a sign yesterday at the roadside that I never saw anywhere
before. It was not a large sign--indeed rather inconspicuous--consisting
of a single word rather crudely painted in black (as by an amateur) upon
a white board. It was nailed to a tree where those in swift passing cars
could not avoid seeing it:

[ REST ]

I cannot describe the odd sense of enlivenment, of pleasure I had when I
saw this new sign.

"Rest!" I exclaimed aloud. "Indeed I will," and I sat down on a stone
not far away.

"Rest!"

What a sign for this very spot! Here in the midst of the haste and
hurry of the Great Road a quiet voice was saying, "Rest." Some one with
imagination, I thought, evidently put that up; some quietist offering
this mild protest against the breathless progress of the age. How often
I have felt the same way myself--as though I were being swept onward
through life faster than I could well enjoy it. For nature passes the
dishes far more rapidly than we can help ourselves.

Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly speculating, this may be only some
cunning advertiser with rest for sale (in these days even rest has its
price), thus piquing the curiosity of the traveller for the disclosure
which he will make a mile or so farther on. Or else some humourist
wasting his wit upon the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like me,
perhaps) to accept his ironical advice. But it would be well worth while
should I find him, to see him chuckle behind his hand.

So I sat there very much interested, for a long time, even framing a
rather amusing picture in my own mind of the sort of person who painted
these signs, deciding finally that he must be a zealot rather than a
trader or humourist. (Confidentially, I could not make a picture of
him in which he was not endowed with plentiful long hair). As I walked
onward again, I decided that in any guise I should like to see him, and
I enjoyed thinking what I should say if I met him. A mile farther up the
road I saw another sign exactly like the first.

"Here he is again," I said exultantly, and that sign being somewhat
nearer the ground I was able to examine it carefully front and back, but
it bore no evidence of its origin.

In the next few miles I saw two other signs with nothing on them but the
word "Rest."

Now this excellent