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.