The Country Road

On a June day, years ago, I was walking along our country road. At the

top of a steep little hill I paused to rest and let my eyes luxuriate in

the billowing greens and tender blues of the valley below. While I stood

there my neighbor came slowly up from the garden, her apron over her

head, a basket of green peas on her arm.

"What a view you have up here on your hill!" I said.

She drew back her apron and turned to look off. "Yes," she said

indulgently; "ye-e-s." Then her face brightened and she turned to me

with real animation: "But it's better in winter when the leaves is off,

'n' you c'n see the passin' on the lower road."

Fresh from the city as I was, with all its prejudices and intolerance

upon me, I was partly amused, partly irritated, by her answer. So all

this glory of greenness, all this wonder of the June woodland, was

merely tolerated, while the baffled 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, the

postman's buggy on its daily rounds, twice a week the meat cart, once a

week the grocery wagon, once a month the "tea-man," and now and then a

neighbor's team on its way to the feed-store or the blacksmith's shop

down at "the Corners."

For this, then,--not for the beauty of the winter landscape, but for

this poor procession of wayfarers, my neighbors waited with impatience.

If I could, I would have snatched up their view bodily and carried it

off with me, back to my own farm for my own particular delectation. It

should never again have shoved itself in their way.

But since that time I have lived longer in the country. If I have not

made it my home for all twelve months, I have dwelt in it from early

April to mid-December, and now, when I think of my neighbor's remark, it

is with growing comprehension. I realize that I, in my patronizing

one-sidedness, was quite wrong.

City folk go to the country, as they say, to "get away"--justifiable

enough, perhaps, or perhaps not. They seek spots remote from the

centres; they choose deserted districts, untraveled roads; they

criticize their ancestors unmercifully for their custom 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 their life, and the road was to them the

emblem of race solidarity--nay, more than the emblem, it was the means

to it. This is still the case with the country people, and as I live

among them I am coming to a realization of the meaning of the Road.

In the city one can never get just this. There are streets, of course,

but by their very multiplicity and complexity they lose their individual

impressiveness and are merged in that great whole, the City. One recoils

from them and takes refuge in the sense of one's own home.

But in the country there is just the Road. Recoil from it? One's heart

goes out to it. The road is a part of home, the part that reaches out to

our friends and draws them to us or brings us to them. It is our outdoor

clubhouse, it is the avenue of the Expected and the Unexpected, it is

the Home Road.

In a sense it does no more for us, and in some ways much less, than our

city streets do. Along these, too, our tradesmen's carts come to our

doors, along these our friends must fare as they arrive or depart; we

seek the streets at our outgoings and our incomings. But they are, after

all, strictly a means. We use them, but when we enter our homes we

forget them, or try 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 are. When we hear teams, we expect

them to go by, and they usually do. When we hear a cab door slam, we

take it for granted that it is before some other house, and usually it

is. And if, having nothing better to do, we perchance walk to the window

and glance out between the curtains, we are repaid by seeing nothing

interesting and by feeling a little shamefaced besides.

Not so in the country. What happens along the Road is usually our

intimate concern. Most of those who go by on it are our own

acquaintances and neighbors, and are interesting as _such_. The rest are

strangers, and interesting as such. For it is the rarity of the stranger

that gives him his piquancy.

And so in the country it is both good form and worth while to watch the

Road--to "keep an eye out," as they say. When Jonathan and I first came

to the farm, we were incased in a hard incrustation of city ways. When

teams passed, we did not look up; when a wagon rattled, we did not know

whose it was, and we said we 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

postmistress who had the ill luck to be selling stamps when a carriage

passed. She hastily shoved them out, and ran to the side window--too

late! "Sakes!" she sighed; "that's the second I've missed to-day!" We

smiled, but I know now that if I had been in that postmistress's place I

should have felt exactly as she did.

When we began to realize the change in ourselves, we were at first

rather sheepish and apologetic about it. We fell into the way of sitting

where we could naturally glance out of the windows, but we did this

casually, as if by chance, and said nothing about it. When August came,

and dusk fell early and lamps were lighted at supper-time, I drew down

the shades.

But one night Jonathan said, carelessly, "Why do you pull them all the

way down?"

"Why not?" I asked, with perhaps just a suspicion.

"Oh," he said, "it always seems so cheerful from the road to look in at

a lighted window."

I left them up, but I noticed that Jonathan kept a careful eye on the

shadowy road outside. Was he trying to cheer it by pleasant looks, I

wondered, or was he just trying to see all that went by?

Jonathan's seat is not so good as mine for observation. A big deutzia

bush looms between his window and the road, while at my window only the

tips 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 seats, suggesting that there was a draft where I was, and that

the light was bad for my eyes, but I found that I did not mind either of

these things.

One day a team passed while Jonathan was carving. He looked up too late,

hesitated, then said, rather consciously: "Who was that? Did you see?"

"_I_ don't know," I said, with a far-away, impersonal air, as though the

matter had no interest for me. But I hadn't the heart to keep up the

pose, and I added: "Perhaps you'll know. It was a white horse, and a

business wagon with red wheels, and the man wore a soft felt hat, and

there was a dog on the seat beside him."

Before I had finished, Jonathan was grinning delightedly. "Suppose we

shake these city ways," he said. He deliberately got up, raised the

shades, pushed back a curtain, and moved a jug of goldenrod. "There! Can

you see better now?" he asked.

And I said cheerfully, "Yes, quite a good deal better. And after this,

Jonathan, when you hear a team coming, why don't you stop carving till

it goes by?"

"I will," said Jonathan.

It was our final capitulation, and since then we have been much more

comfortable. We run to the window whenever we feel inclined, and we

leave our shades up at dusk without apology or circumlocution. We are

coming to know our neighbors' teams by their sound, and we are proud of

it. Why, indeed, should we be ashamed of this human interest? Why should

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 by the

mill? Is he not of more value than many grosbeaks? But how can we love

our neighbor if we do not pay some attention to him--him and his horse

and his cart and all that is his? And how shall we pay attention to him

if we neglect the opportunities of the Road, since for the rest he is

busy and we are busy, and we belong each to our own farm?

I stopped at a friendly door one day to ask, "Have Phil and Jimmy gone

by? I wanted to see them."

"No, I haven't seen them." The bright-faced little lady stood in the

doorway glancing over my shoulder out toward the sunny road. "Have you

seem them to-day, Nellie?" she called into the dusky sitting-room. "No,"

she turned back to me, "we haven't seen them. And," she added, with gay

directness, "nobody could get by the house _without_ our seeing them;

I'm sure of that!"

Her remark pleased me immensely. I like this frank interest in the Road

very much. When I am at home, I have it myself, and I have stopped being

ashamed of it. When I am on the Road, I like to know that I am an

object of interest to the dwellers in the houses I pass. I look up at

the windows, whose tiny panes reflect the brightness of outdoors and

tell me nothing of the life within, and I like to think that some one

behind them knows that I am going by. Often there 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, and after the other necessary

preliminaries I find my friends. In the country as I drive up to the

house I notice curtains stirring, I hear voices, and before I have had

time to get out and find the hitch-rope every person in the house is

either at the gate or standing in the doorway. Our visit is begun before

we have left the Road, the hospitable, social Road. Such ways would

probably not do for the city. So much the worse for the city. The

country ways are best.

Everything that happens along the Road has the social touch. In the

city, orders are given by telephone, and when the delivery wagon comes,

it 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

dashes back to the wagon, with a crisp "Git-up!" to the well-trained

horse, who starts forward while his driver is still mounting to his

seat.

Not so in the country. The wagon draws peacefully out to the side of the

Road, and the horse falls to nibbling grass if he is unchecked, or to

browsing on my rosebushes if he is not. If it is the grocer's wagon, the

boy comes around to 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 cart or the fish wagon, I

seize a platter and go out, the back flap of the cart is lifted up, I

step under its shade and peer in, considering what is offered me and

deciding what I will have plucked out for me to carry back to the house.

Besides the routine visitors, there are others--peddlers with wonderful

collections of things to sell (whole clothing shops or furniture stores

some of them bring with them), 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 who want

to buy, too,--buyers of old iron, of old rags, of old rubber.

"Anny-ting, anny-ting vat you vill sell me, madame, I vill buy it," said

one, with outspread hands.

Cattle go by, great droves of them, being driven along the Road and sold

from farm to farm until all are gone. I love the day that brings them. A

dust haze down the Road, the mooing of cows and the baaing of calves,

the shouts of the drovers, the sound of many hoofs, and the cattle are

here. The farmer 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 with the rest, all of them glad enough of the

chance to pause in the shade and nibble at the rich, cool grass. One or

two of the "critters" are approved of, perhaps, and bought, and the rest

move on, the sunny dust haze rises and clears, the shouts of the drovers

grow faint, and the Road is still again.

Men go by looking for work; they will clean your well for you, they will

file your horses' teeth for you, they will mend your umbrellas and

repair your 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 way how he makes a living; but in the country we espy him

from afar and are out at the gate to meet him, with all the scissors and

knives in the house.

There are tramps, too, of course. Not the kind one finds near cities, or

in crowded summer watering-places. Our Road does not lead to Rome, at

least not very directly, and the tramp who 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 of modern sociological science, we offer them the

hospitality of the back porch with sandwiches and coffee, while we

exchange the commonplaces of the season. It is the custom of the Road.

And so the procession of the Road moves on. If we wait long enough--and

it is not so long either--everything goes by: gay wedding parties,

christening parties, slow funerals, the Road bears them all; and to

those who live beside it nothing is alien, nothing indifferent.

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 know, broken only when human

necessity most sharply importunes, in the crises of birth, of death. On

Sundays all the world drives to church, or sits on its doorstep and

watches the rest. And Sunday and week days alike, every one's interest

goes out to the Road.

I venture to say that when we think of our city homes we think of their

interiors, but when we think of our farmhouse homes we think of the Road

as well. They are like little islands in a river,--one remembers them

together. For the Road is a river--a river of life. Most of our words

about roads imply motion. A road comes, we say, and it goes, it sweeps,

it curves, it climbs, 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 glimpses of these that I had

years ago--a footpath over a rounded hilltop through long yellow grass,

a rough logging-road beside a foaming mountain river, a brushy wood road

leading through bars into deep shade, a country road at dusk, curving

past a low farmhouse with lights in the windows. I could never follow

these roads, but I remember them still, and still they allure me.

Our Road, as it flows placidly past our farm, suggests nothing very

exciting or spectacular. It is a pretty bit of road, rounding a rocky

corner of the farm and leading past the old house under cool depths of

maple shade, out again into a broad space of sunlight, dropping over a

little hill, around a curve, and out of sight. I know it well, of

course, every rock and flower of it, but its final appeal to me is not

through its beauty, it is not even through my sense 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, one _might_ be led into the realm of "faerie" to

the broad turnpike which fares through open country, plunges through the

surging cities, and escapes to broad lands beyond--any path, any road,

makes this appeal. And so long as one has faith that what may be is

more than what is, so long as one has the buoyant patience to await it

or the will to go forth and seek it, so long as one has the imagination

and the heart of the wayfarer, the charm of the Road will be potent.

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