“I have been told the roads are dreadful and the accommodations worse.”
He surveyed me from head to foot with about the same expression that he might have been expected to use if I had asked whether one could safely travel to Brooklyn.
“You won’t find Ritz hotels every few miles, and you won’t find Central Park roads all of the way. If you can put up with less than that, you can go—easy!” Whereupon he reached up over his head without even looking, took down a map, spread it on the table before him, and unhesitatingly raced his blue pencil up the edge of the Hudson River, exactly as the pencil of Tad draws cartoons at the movies.
“You go here—Albany, Utica, Syracuse.”
“No, please!” I said. “I want to go by way of Pittsburgh and St. Louis.”
“You asked for the best route to San Francisco!” He looked rather annoyed.
“Yes, but I want to go by way of St. Louis.”
“Why do you want to go to St. Louis?”
“Because we have friends there.”