I shall not inquire by what miracle of grace Paw has learned to find his
way about on these curling-iron mountain roads. I am content to eat a
barrel of dust a day rather than miss the sight of Maw, placid and
bespectacled, on the front seat of the flivver. Without her the mountain
roads would never be the same for me, and my own vacation would be
spoiled. Frankly, I am in love with Maw; and as for Cynthy in her
pants----
Times has changed. Maw also wears pants today. She says that they are
convenienter when she sits down round on the grass. Sometimes her pants
are fastened round the ankles with large and shiny safety pins,
apparently saved from the time when Jimmy was a baby. Sometimes they
hang straight down _au naturel_, and sometimes they stop at the knee--in
which case, as Maw's _au naturel_ is disposed to adipose--they make a
startling adjunct to the mountain scenery. But, bless her heart, Maw
doesn't care! She is on her way and on her vacation, the first in all
her life. There rest on her soul the content and poise which her own
square and self-respecting mind tells her are due her after forty years
of labor, including the Lord's Days thereof. I call Maw's vacation her
Lord's Day. It ought to be held a sacred thing by all who tour our
national parks, where Maw is gregariously accumulated in these days. I
used to own this park, you and I did. It's Maw's park now. Forty years
of hard work!
Has she earned a vacation? I'll say she has. Is she taking it? I'll say
she is.
Maw has company in the park--not always just the company she or I would
select, were it left to us. Some of these do not go out by motor car. Of
course Abe Klinghammer, of the Plasterers' Union, Local Number Four,
being rich, goes out by rail on a round trip. He can go to the tents
and log cottages of the Camps Company. He does not kick any more than
Maw kicks. To tell the truth, in spite of the front he throws, Abe is a
little bit scared at all this sudden splendor in his life. He is a
little uneasy about how to act, how to seem careless about it, as though
he had been used to it all his life. Abe takes it out in neckties.
Having bought a swell one of four colors and inserted a large cameo in
it, he loses his nerve and begins to doubt whether he is getting by. You
will always see Abe looking at your necktie.
And there is Benjamin D. O'Cleave of New York--with a flourish under it
on the register. He and his wife take it out in diamonds. You would
never see one of the O'Cleave family at a roadside camp fire such as
that where Maw fries the trout and Rowena toasts the bread on a fork.
The original O'Cleave came over in the Mayflower, as I am informed--but,
without question in my mind, came steerage. You will find Mr. O'Cleave
in the swellest hotel, in the highest-priced room. He is first in war,
first in peace, and first in the dining room.
Mr. O'Cleave pays a plenty a head for all his family, for rooms with
bath and meals. The hotel company would gladly charge him more, and Mr.
O'Cleave gladly would pay more. He confides to the hotel clerk--who is a
Y. M. C. A. secretary back East--that he should not care if it was even
fifty dollars a day, he could pay it. But, if so, he would already want
for his money more service, which he waits five hours and not enough
cars to get him over to see the Giantess Geyser play, which the Giantess
maybe didn't play again for eight days, and should a business man and
taxpayer wait eight days because of not cars enough by a hotel, which is
the only place a man has to go with his family? Is it reasonable?