THE KENNEBEC JOURNEY.
“I should think you would give up your carriage journey this year, and go to the World’s Fair.”
We cannot tell you how many times this was said to us, but often enough to become trite. Give up a carriage journey when we had not missed one for more than twenty summers! What an idea! Our friends could go to the World’s Fair, and tell us many things, and we could read volumes about it, but who could take a carriage journey for us?
All that is neither here nor there, however, for we believe things will be as they are to be, and for all we knew the journey, and Fair too, were in store for us. So we waited until our summer program should be revealed to us. For a time it seemed as if “Home, Sweet Home” would claim us, but the way cleared after a while, and a two weeks’ journey with Jerry began to assume form. Two weeks are better than none, but where could we go in two weeks? Through the mountains, to be sure, but when we go to the mountains, we like to go via Dixville Notch or Boston, and take a month for it. Berkshire came next to mind, but we like to take those unsurpassed drives at the beginning or end of a long journey. We were perplexed, and wondered what we were to do.
In such times of doubt, we usually drive to Boston and there await revelation. Since this last experience we shall always be ready to trust Boston’s oracular power, for it there came to us to take passage for Bath, Maine, on the boat which left Boston at six o’clock Wednesday evening, July twelfth.
This beginning seems as abrupt as the ending of our trip two years ago, when we drove over two weeks to reach Bar Harbor, and sailed back to Boston in a night. For the sake of beginning a carriage journey on terra firma, we will go back a bit, and tell you we had already enjoyed two days’ journeying. We left Leominster Monday morning, July tenth, driving to Lancaster the back way, to say good morning to the campers at Spectacle Pond.
Jerry had two hours rest, and the time passed quickly with us, for we met friends at dinner at the Lancaster House, and spent a half hour studying a collection of fine etchings in the music room, where Mr. Closson was to lecture in the evening.
We went out of our way to spend the night at Wayland Inn, and made calls on friends along the way to Boston the next day.
The special medium of revelation as to our next move was the Sunday Globe given us by the campers, in which our eyes chanced to rest on an advertisement of an excursion to Nova Scotia. This seemed hardly feasible, though we actually gave it consideration, as it was stated the roads there were good for driving. This was only a “leader” to what was foreordained for us. It must be it was foreordained, for our best friend so declared it in writing us, and surely from the moment we decided to take the boat for Bath, everything went like clock-work.
We thought best to go to the wharf, on arriving in Boston, to make some inquiries, and secure a stateroom. We drove on Beacon Street as far as we could, as we came in from Watertown via Allston, then made a bold plunge into the tangles of carts, carriages, and cars across Tremont street down Bromfield, through Washington to State, then in and out, on and on, Jerry fully realizing the importance of his movements, and using his abundant good sense in sparing his nose from the grazing of the wheels that crossed his path, until we finally saw the welcome sign, far down Atlantic avenue. Once safely in the office of the Kennebec Steamship Company, going to Bath seemed the simplest thing in the world. We were assured Jerry would have the best of care, and a stateroom was secured for the next night. Some one else will have to tell you how we got back to our destination for the night. We are inadequate beyond saying we went back another way. Quite likely Jerry knows every turn, but he is silent on the subject.