e timber must be very fine, and
probably there are some superb New England elms. The roads must be good,
uncommonly good; and there must be unusual facilities for getting around
and picnicking and finding charming views and all that sort of thing.

Nor does it require much art to learn all this from that pathetic plaint
about the foot-paths. For the game of the Briton in a foreign land is
ever the same. It changes not from generation unto generation. Bid him
to the feast and set before him all your wealth of cellar and garner.
Spread before him the meat, heap up for him the fruits of the season.
Weigh down the board with every vegetable that the gardener's art can
bring to perfection in or out of its time--white-potatoes,
sweet-potatoes, lima-beans, string-beans, fresh peas, sweet-corn,
lettuce, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, musk-melons and
water-melons--all you will--no word will you hear from him till he has
looked over the whole assortment and discovered that you have not the
vegetable marrow, and that you do not raise it. Then will he break
forth and cry out for his vegetable marrow. All these things are naught
to him if he cannot have his vegetable marrow, and he will tell you
about the exceeding goodness and rarity of the vegetable marrow, until
you will figure it in your mind like unto the famous mangosteen fruit of
the Malay Peninsula, he who once eats whereof tastes never again any
other fruit of the earth, finding them all as dust and ashes by the side
of the mangosteen.

That is to say, this will happen unless you have eaten of the vegetable
marrow, and have the presence of mind to recall to the Briton's memory
the fact that it is nothing but a second-choice summer squash; after
which the meal will proceed in silence. Just so might Mr. Burroughs have
brought about a sudden change in the topic of conversation by telling
the English lady that where the American treads out a path he builds a
road by the side of it.

To tell the truth, I think that the English foot-path is something
pathetic beyond description. The better it is, the older, the better
worn, the more it speaks with a sad significance of the long established
inequalities of old-world society. It means too often the one poor,
pitiful right of a poor man, the man who must walk all his life, to go
hither and thither through the rich man's country. The lady may walk it
for pleasure if she likes, but the man who walks it because he must,
tu