Whose Half-Century Pilgrimage on the Main-Travelled Road of Life Has
Brought Them Only Toil and Deprivation, This Book of Stories Is
Dedicated By a Son to Whom Every Day Brings a Deepening Sense of His
Parents' Silent Heroism
The main-travelled road in the West (as everywhere) is hot and dusty in
summer, and desolate and drear with mud in fall and spring, and in
winter the winds sweep the snow across it; but it does sometimes cross a
rich meadow where the songs of the larks and bobolinks and blackbirds
are tangled. Follow it far enough, it may lead past a bend in the river
where the water laughs eternally over its shallows.
Mainly it is long and wearyful, and has a dull little town at one end
and a home of toil at the other. Like the main-travelled road of life it
is traversed by many classes of people, but the poor and the weary
predominate.
Table of Contents.
Main-Travelled Roads
Foreword xi
Introduction 1
A Branch Road 7
Up the Coolly 67
Among the Corn-Rows 131
The Return of a Private 167
Under the Lion's Paw 195
The Creamery Man 219
A Day's Pleasure 245
Mrs. Ripley's Trip 261
Uncle Ethan Ripley 281
God's Ravens 301
A "Good-Fellow's" Wife 327