Everyone has his own notion of the perfect vacation. We have ours, and that is the vacation which takes one home to a small town a long way off. This, of course, implies considerable foresight in picking out one's ancestral seat. You must also arrange to have a mother there waiting for you—preferably with white hair. Always mention the color of the hair when ordering a mother. White is best, and perhaps next to that iron-grey.
Let us suppose that you haven't been home in a couple of years or more. You have written a number of letters and telegrams telling them the exact hour you will arrive, and so when you finally chug-chug into the little station on the same old stub-line which is always half an hour late, you find them all drawn up to meet you.
For a few minutes the world becomes one blur of arms that go around one's neck, and faces held up to be kissed. And then you are gravely passed in review, the cut of your clothes and the color of your hat, and whether or not you have got stouter or leaner or greyer than before.
In the ordinary world where you live and move and have your job and vote, you may be a man of standing, a well-known politician or banker or editor. But here, whether captain or clerk, you are just "Mollie's boy, Bill," or "Annie's boy, Pete," or whatever may be your mother's first name and your own. Here you are never permitted to grow up. Here you are liable to be called "Willie" or "Babe" to your death at eighty.
Outside the station the same old family horse is rubbing his ear against the same old battered telephone pole to which he is hitched. He gazes with mild indifference on the confusion and bustle around him. He has long ceased to show interest in anything but oats.
As you drive up the main street you notice with extraordinary interest that old man Johnson has put a new plate-glass front in his store, and young Brown has hung his shingle up as a doctor. You pass by the one street-car waiting to make its half-hourly trip, and the motorman yells joyfully, "H'lo, Pete, when did yuh get back?"
At the house the dinner is waiting—ah, a dinner that really is a dinner! There are all the things you used to like, and have ever since wistfully dreamed of in city restaurants, the fried chicken and the pumpkin-pie and all.
"And now," says mother, as you lay down your knife and fork and come up to breathe, "how is your Aunt Kate, and have you seen Cousin Maggie lately, and have you heard how Lizzie is getting on with that fellow she married, and when were you last in—?"
And you begin and talk for two weeks.
