ACROSS THE DELAWARE
The afternoon run was even more delightful than that of the morning. Yet
one does not really get free of New York—its bustle and thickness of
traffic—until one gets west of Paterson, which is twentyfive miles west,
and not even then. New York is so all embracing. It is supposed to be
chiefly represented by Manhattan Island, but the feel of it really
extends to the Delaware Water Gap, one hundred miles west, as it does to
the eastern end of Long Island, one hundred miles east, and to
Philadelphia, one hundred miles south, or Albany, one hundred miles
north. It is all New York.
But west of Paterson and Boonton the surge of traffic was beginning to
diminish, and we were beginning to taste the real country. Not so many
autotrucks and wagons were encountered here, though automobiles proper
were even more numerous, if anything. This was a wealthy residence
section we were traversing, with large handsome machines as common as
wagons elsewhere, and the occupants looked their material prosperity.
The roads, too, as far as Dover, our next large town, thirty miles on,
were beautiful—smooth, grey and white macadam, lined mostly with kempt
lawns, handsome hedges, charming dwellings, and now and then yellow
fields of wheat or oats or rye, with intermediate acres of tall, ripe
corn. I never saw better fields of grain, and remembered reading in the
papers that this was a banner season for crops. The sky, too, was wholly
entrancing, a clear blue, with great, fleecy clouds sailing along in the
distance like immense hills or ships. We passed various small hotels and
summer cottages, nestling among these low hills, where summer boarders
were sitting on verandas, reading books or swinging in hammocks or
crocheting, American fashion, in rocking chairs. All my dread of the
conventional American family arose as I surveyed them, for somehow, as
idyllic as all this might appear on the surface, it smacked the least
bit of the doldrums. Youths and maidens playing croquet and tennis,
mother (and much more rarely father) seated near, reading and watching.
The three regular meals, the regular nine o’clock hour for retiring!
Well, I was glad we were making forty miles an hour.
As we passed through Dover it was three o’clock. As we passed Hopatcong,
after pausing to sketch a bridge over the canal, it was nearing four.
There were pauses constantly which interrupted our speed. Now it was a
flock of birds flying over a pool, all their fluttering wings reflected
in the water, and Franklin had to get out and make a pencil note of it.
Now a lovely view over some distant hills, a small town in a valley, a
factory stack by some water side.
“Say, do these people here ever expect to get to Indiana?” remarked
Speed in an aside to Miss H——.
We had to stop in Dover—a city of thirty thousand—at the principal drug
store, for a glass of ice cream soda. We had to stop at Hopatcong and
get a time table in order to learn whether Miss H—— could get a train in
from the Water Gap later in the evening. We had to stop and admire a
garden of goldenglows and old fashioned August flowers.
Beyond Hopatcong we began to realize that we would no more than make the
Water Gap this day. The hills and valleys were becoming more marked, the
roads more difficult to ascend. As we passed Stanhope, a small town
beyond Hopatcong, we got on the wrong road and had to return, a common
subsequent experience. Beyond Stanhope we petitioned one family group—a
mother and three children—for some water, and were refused. A half mile
further on, seeing a small iron pump on a lawn, we stopped again. A
lean, dreamy woman came out and we asked her. “Yes, surely,” she replied
and re-entered the house, returning with a blue pitcher. Chained to a
nearby tree a collie bitch which looked for all the world like a fox
jumped and barked for joy.
“Are you going to Hackettstown?” asked our hostess simply.
“We’re going through to Indiana,” confided Franklin in a neighborly
fashion.
A look of childlike wonder at the far off came into the woman’s voice
and eyes. “To Indiana?” she replied. “That’s a long way, isn’t it?”
“Oh, about nine hundred miles,” volunteered Speed briskly.
As we sped away—vain of our exploit, I fancy—she stood there, pitcher in
hand, looking after us. I wished heartily she might ride all the long
distances her moods might crave. “Only,” I thought, “would it be a fair
exchange for all her delightsome wonder?”
This side of Hackettstown we careened along a ridge under beautiful
trees surveying someone’s splendid country estate, with a great house, a
lake and hills of sheep. On the other side of Hackettstown we had a blow
out and had to stop and change a tire. A Russian _moujik_, transplanted
to America and farming in this region, interested me. A reaper whirring
in a splendid field of grain informed me that we were abroad at harvest
time—we would see much reaping then. While the wheel was being repaired
I picked up a scrap of newspaper lying on the road. It was of recent
issue and contained an advertisement of a great farm for sale which read
“Winter is no time to look at a farm, for then everything is out of
commission and you cannot tell what a farm is worth. Spring is a
dangerous time, for then everything is at its best, and you are apt to
be deceived by fields and houses which later you would not think of
buying. Mid-August is the ideal time. Everything is bearing by then. If
a field or a yard or a house or cattle look good at that time you may be
sure that they will look as good or better at others. Examine in
mid-August. Examine now.”
“Ah,” I said, “now I shall see this eastern half of the United States at
the best time. If it looks good now I shall know pretty well how good
eastern America is.”
And so we sped on, passing a little farther on a forlorn, decadent,
gloomy hamlet about which I wanted to write a poem or an essay. Edgar
Allan Poe might have lived here and written “The Raven.” The house of
Usher might have been a dwelling in one of these hypochondriacal
streets. They were so dim and gloomy and sad. Still farther on as we
neared the Delaware we came into a mountain country which seemed almost
entirely devoted to cattle and the dairy business. It was not an ultra
prosperous land—what mountain country is? You can find it on the map if
you choose, lying between Phillipsburg and the river.
[Illustration: THE OLD ESSEX AND MORRIS CANAL]
Something—perhaps the approach of evening, perhaps the gloom of great
hills which make darksome valleys wherein lurk early shadows and cool,
damp airs; perhaps the tinkle of cowbells and the lowing of homing
herds; perhaps the presence of dooryards where laborers and farmers,
newly returned from work, were washing their hands in pans outside of
kitchen doors; or the smoke curl of evening fires from chimneys, or the
glint of evening lamps through doors and windows—was very touching about
all this; anyhow, as we sped along I was greatly moved. Life
orchestrates itself at times so perfectly. It sings like a prima donna
of humble joys, and happy homes and simple tasks. It creates like a
great virtuoso, bow in hand, or fingers upon invisible keys, a supreme
illusion. The heart hurts; one’s eyes fill with tears. We skirted great
hills so close that at times, as one looked up, it seemed as though they
might come crashing down on us. We passed thick forests where in this
mid-August weather, one could look into deep shadows, feeling the
ancient childish terror of the woods and of the dark. I looked up a
cliff side—very high up—and saw a railroad station labeled
MANUNKA-CHUNK. I looked into a barnyard and saw pigs grunting over corn
and swill, and a few chickens trying to flutter up into a low tree. The
night was nigh.
Presently, in this sweet gloom we reached a ferry which crosses the
river somewhere near the Water Gap and which we were induced to approach
because we knew of no bridge. On the opposite side, anchored to a wire
which crossed the river, was a low flat punt, which looked for all the
world like a shallow saucepan. We called “Yoho!” and back came the
answer “All right!” Presently the punt came over and in a silvery
twilight Speed maneuvered the car onto the craft. A tall, lank yokel
greeted us.
“Goin’ to the Water Gap?”
“Yes, how far is it?”
“Seven miles.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven o’clock.”
That gave us an hour in which to make Miss H——’s train.
“That’s Pennsylvania over there, isn’t it?”
“Yep, that’s Pennsylvania. There ain’t nothing in New Jersey ’cept cows
and mountains.”
He grinned as though he had made a great joke.
Speed, as usual, was examining the engine. Franklin and I were gazing
enraptured at the stately hills which sentinel this stream. In the
distance was the Water Gap, a great cleft in the hills where in
unrecorded days the river is believed to have cut its way through. One
could see the vast masonry of some bridge which had been constructed
farther up the stream.
We clambered up the bank on the farther side, the car making a great
noise. In this sweet twilight with fireflies and spirals of gnats and
“pinchin' bugs,” as Speed called them, we tore the remainder of the
distance, the eyes of the car glowing like great flames. Along this
river road we encountered endless groups of strolling summer
boarders—girls with their arms about each other, quiescent women and
older maids idling in the evening damp.
“A land of summer hotels this, and summer boarding houses,” I said.
“Those are all old maids or school teachers,” insisted Speed with
Indiana assurance, “or I’ll eat my hat.”
In the midst of our flight Speed would tell stories, tossing them back
in the wind and perfumes. Miss H—— was singing “There Was an Old
Soldier.” In no time at all—though not before it was dark—we were
entering a region compact of automobiles, gasoline smoke, and half
concealed hotel windows and balconies which seemed to clamber up cliffs
and disappear into the skies. Below us, under a cliff, ran a railroad,
its freight and passenger trains seeming to thunder ominously near. We
were, as I could see, high on some embankment or shelf cut in the hill.
Presently we turned into a square or open space which opened out at the
foot of the hill, and there appeared a huge caravansary, The Kittatinny,
with a fountain and basin in the foreground which imitated the colored
waters of the Orient. Lackeys were there to take our bags—only, since
Miss H—— had to make her train, we had to go a mile farther on to the
station under the hill. To give Franklin and Miss H—— time Speed parked
the car somewhere near the station and I went to look for colored
picture cards.
I wandered off into a region of lesser hotels and stores—the usual
clutter of American mountain resort gayety. It brought back to me
Tannersville and Haines Corners in the Catskills, Excelsior Springs and
the Hot Springs of Virginia and the Ozarks. American summer mountain
life is so naive, so gauche, so early Victorian. Nothing could be
duller, safer, more commonplace apparently, and yet with such a lilt
running through it, than this scene. Here were windows of restaurants or
ball rooms or hotel promenades, all opened to the cool mountain air and
all gaily lighted. An orchestra was to be heard crooning here and there.
The one street was full of idlers, summer cottagers, hotel guests, the
natives—promenading. Many electric lamps cast hard shadows provided by
the trees. It was all so delightfully cool and fragrant. All these
maidens were so bent on making catches, apparently, so earnest to
attract attention. They were decked out in all the fineries and
fripperies of the American summer resort scene. I never saw more
diaphanous draperies—more frail pinks, blues, yellows, creams. All the
brows of all the maidens seemed to be be-ribboned. All the shoulders
were flung about with light gauzy shawls. Noses were powdered, lips
faintly rouged, perhaps. The air was vibrant with a kind of mating
note—or search.
“Well, well,” I exclaimed, and bought me all the truly indicative
postcards I could find.