“No, no!” he complained, “I don’t want to go down to Egypt. There is nothing doing down in Egypt. I’m slow of speech; without imagination; and it’s a hard job, anyway. Let me stay here and be goatherd to Jethro, my father-in-law, and dream of the good old days of the giants, when men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair. Ah!—there was something doing in those days!”
From Moses to Masefield the times have been fatally late. And so mine are, with the clipper ships, the frontiers, the giants, and the daughters of men that are fair, all gone! But I seem to see them fair. I suppose I ought not, having been born so fatally late. And I wonder if I might not find a giant, too, if I should hunt? and a clipper ship? and a frontier? and even an escape from Hingham!
Lumber is still brought in boats to one of Hingham’s old wharves, but the rest of her wharves are deserted. Her citizens, who used to do business in great waters, stop now in Hingham Harbor to catch smelts. Change and some decay one can see all about Hingham, but little chance of escape.
Down at the foot of Mullein Hill, on which my house stands, there runs a long, long trail awinding into that land of my dreams; but I ask: Where does it cross the frontier? I have traveled it, going south, in my Ford (if you are out for frontiers, take a Ford. We have a saying here in Hingham that a Ford will take a man anywhere—except into good society!)—I say I have gone south over this road which runs at the foot of Mullein Hill as far as Philadelphia, and no frontier!—the next stop was Chester. I have gone east over the same road until I came to within ten miles of Skowhegan, Maine, where I ran into a steam-roller on the road. When you meet a steam-roller on a road in Maine, you are very near the frontier. If there is any adventure for you on the trip, it will be on the détour around that steam-roller. But under the roller ran the road and on into Skowhegan, and on out of Skowhegan into Aroostook County, the richest county in the United States, where they raise “spuds” enough to feed, not only Boston, but the rest of dear old Ireland with her; and all the way from Hingham to Aroostook, except at the steam-roller, there was no chance to get off.
And this road, taking a turn among these glorious potato-fields of Maine, starts over the mountains of New Hampshire, crosses the corn and cattle belt in the central portion of the country, and, running on and on, dips into the Imperial Valley in far-off California, the hottest cultivated spot on earth. And all the way from Hingham, roundabout by Maine, to the Imperial Valley, you may not stop, unless you run out of “gas.” And the oil companies do not intend this magical chance to attend you, for they have planted gasoline tanks under every second telegraph pole all the way.
This road, starting from Mullein Hill, Hingham, and running to Aroostook, Maine, and to the Imperial Valley in California, takes a new turn among the melon-fields there, works its way back along the Gulf States, binding their ragged edge like a selvage, and, bending into Florida, threads its way among the Everglades and out, heading off across the cotton-fields, on across the corn and cattle belt again, climbs Pike’s Peak and down, climbs Mount Hood and down, and, faring on into the State of Washington, climbs the fruited slopes of old Tacoma, “The Mountain that was God.” And all the way from Hingham some one has been there before us, and laid an oiled road for us, and left us no frontier.
Surely we are born late; and my pretty niece fatally late. The frontier is gone. The buffaloes are gone. I saw their ancient trails out of the car windows as my train roared over the Canadian prairie, wavering parallel paths in the virgin sod, a vivider green than the rest of the grass, narrow meandering lines vanishing short of the far-off horizon where hung a cloud not larger than a man’s hand, like the dust of the last disappearing herd.
“Hank” Monk is gone. This king of overland stage-drivers sleeps in Carson City; and beside sleeps his Concord coach of split hickory. Concord has ceased to make such coaches.
They mark our passage as a race of men,
Earth will not see such coaches again.