ountr

o rest and let my eyes luxuriate in the billowing greens and tender blues of the valley below. While I stood

have up here on y

." Then her face brightened and she turned to me with real animation: "But it's bett

led observer waited for the leaves to be "off"! And all for the sake of seeing-what? A few lumber wagons, forsooth, loaded with ties for the railway, a few cows driven along morning and evening, a few children trudging to and from school,

hbors waited with impatience. If I could, I would have snatched up their view bodily and carried it off with m

nths, I have dwelt in it from early April to mid-December, and now, when I think of my neighbor's remar

stom of building houses close to the road and keeping the front dooryard clear of shrubbery. But they who built those homes which are our summer refuge did not want to get away; they wanted to get together. The country was not their respite, it was

ltiplicity and complexity they lose their individual impressiveness and are merged in that

part of home, the part that reaches out to our friends and draws them to us or brings us to them. I

to. Our individual share in the street is not large. So much goes on and goes by that has only the most general bearing on our interests that we cease to give it our attention at all. It is not good form to watch the street, because it is not worth while. When children's voices fly in at our windows, we assume that they are other people's children, and they usually a

ho go by on it are our own acquaintances and neighbors, and are interesting as such. The rest are s

did not care. When one of our neighbors remarked, casually, "Heard Bill Smith's team go by at half-past eleven last night. Wonder if the's anythin' wrong down his way," we stared at one another in amazement, and wondered, "Now, how in the world did he know it was Bill Smith's team?" We smiled over the story of a p

the way of sitting where we could naturally glance out of the windows, but we did this casually, as if by chance, and s

, carelessly, "Why do you p

ed, with perhaps

s so cheerful from the road to

the shadowy road outside. Was he trying to cheer it by pleasant

of a waxberry bush obscure the view, and there is a door beside me. Therefore Jonathan was distinctly at a disadvantage. He offered to change sea

g. He looked up too late, hesitated, then said,

I hadn't the heart to keep up the pose, and I added: "Perhaps you'll know. It was a white horse, and a bus

e city ways," he said. He deliberately got up, raised the shades, pushed back a

er. And after this, Jonathan, when you hear a team

" said J

hould we be elated that we can recognize a bluebird by his flight, and ashamed of knowing our neighbor's old bay by his gait? Why should we boast of our power to recognize the least murmur of the deceptive grosbeak, and not take pride in being able to "spot" Bill Smith's team by the peculiar rattle of its board bottom as it crosses the bridge b

day to ask, "Have Phil and Jimm

road. "Have you seem them to-day, Nellie?" she called into the dusky sitting-room. "No," she turned back to me, "we haven'

is some sign of recognition-a motion of the hand through a parted curtain, or rarely a smiling face; now and then some one looks out from a doorway to send a greeting, or glances up from the garden or the well; but even without these tokens I still have the sense of being noticed, and I find it pleasant and companionable. In the city, when I go to see a friend, I approach a house that gives no sign. I mount to a noncommittal vestibule and push an impersonal button

sweeps up with a rush, the boy seizes a basket and jumps out, runs to the back door, shouts the name of the owner, slams down his goods, and

the back porch and we discuss what supplies will probably be needed by the time of his next visit. Incidentally, we talk about weather and crops and woodchucks and trout, or bass or partridges, according to the season. If it is the meat

em), peddlers with books, peddlers with silver, peddlers with jewelry. In the course of a few months one is offered everything from shoe-strings to stoves. There are men

mer and the "hired man" leave their work and saunter out to the Road to "look 'em over," the children come running out to watch the pretty creatures, sleek or tousled, soft-eyed or wild-eyed, yearlings with bits of horns, stocky two-year-olds, and wabbly-legged youngsters hardly able to keep pace wi

ur clocks and sharpen your scissors. In the city, when we hear the scissors-grinder ding-ding-dinging along the street, we wonder in an impersonal wa

chooses it is sure to be a mild and unenterprising creature, a desultory tramp who does not really know his business. Some of the same ones come back year after year, and, in defiance

fferent. Throughout the week the daytime is for business-remembering always that on the country Road business is never merely business, but always sociability too; the early evening is for pleasure; the night is for rest, for that stillness that cities never k

mbs, it descends, it rises and drops, it bends and turns. And, in fact, it means movement, it is always bringing life and taking it again, or if for a time it does neither, it is always inviting, always promising. We have all felt it. As we are whirled along in a railway train even, the thing that stirs our imagination is the roads, the paths. I can still remember glimp

of ownership in it; it is simply that it is a Road-a road that leads out of Everywhere into Everywhere Else, a road that goes on. About a road that ends there is no glamour. It may be pretty or useful, but as a road it is a failure. For the Road is the symbol of endless possibility. From the faintest footpath across a meadow, where as a child one has always felt that some elf or gnome may appear, or along which, if one were to wander with sufficient negligence, o