I was told that I wasn't the only person on the road. The great Weston was behind me, patriarch of "hikers," aged seventy-five. He wore ice under his hat and was walking from New York to St. Paul at twenty-five miles a day, and was accompanied by an automobile full of liquid food. Far ahead of me was a woman in high-heeled boots tramping from New York to San Francisco. She carried only a small handbag, walked with incredible rapidity, and was proving for newspaper that it was just as easy to walk in Vienna boots as in any other. Several weeks before me a cripple had passed, wheeling a wheelbarrow full of picture-post-cards of himself, which he sold at a nickel each, thereby supporting himself. He was going from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, but had five years to do it in.
For all and sundry upon the road I had a ready smile and a greeting; almost every one replied to me at least as heartily, and many were ready to talk at length. Some, however, to whom I gave greeting either took me for a disreputable tramp or felt themselves too important in the sight of the Lord. When I said, "How d'ye do?" or "Good morning" they simply stared at me as if I were a cow that had mooed. In my whole journey I encountered no hostility whatever. Only once or twice I would hear a woman in a car say truculently to her husband, "There goes Weary Willie."
I had pleasant encounters innumerable, and many a talk with children. I felt that as I was in search for the emerging American, the American of to-morrow and the day after, I ought to take the children I met rather seriously. It was surprising to me that the grown-ups upon the road said to me always, "How-do?" but the children said, "Hullo." The children always spoke as if they had met me before, or as if they were dying for me to stop and talk to them and tell them all about the road, and who I was and what I was doing.
ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL: MY BREAKFAST PARTY.
At a little place called Clarkville I had a breakfast party. Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning. It had been a hard frosty night, and I slept in a barn on two planks beside an old rusty reaping-machine. At five in the morning I made my first fire of the day, and I shared a pot of hot tea with a disreputable tramp, who had come to warm himself at the blaze. By seven o'clock I had walked into the next village, about five miles on, and I was ready for a second breakfast. My first had been for the purpose of getting warm; now I was hungry for something to eat.
It was a beautiful morning; on each side of the road were orchards in full bloom, the gnarled and angular apple trees were showing themselves lovely in myriad outbreaking of blossom, and there were thousands of dandelions in the rank green grass beneath them. The sides of the roadway and the banks of the village stream were deep in grass and clover, and every hollow of the world seemed brimming with sunshine. The sun had been radiant, and he stood over a shoulder of the Catskills and poured warmth on the whole Western world.
On the bank of the stream I spread out my things, emptying out of my pack, pots, cups, provisions, books, paper, pen, and ink. I gathered wisps of last year's weeds, and on a convenient spot started my little fire. I had just put eggs in to boil when the first of my party arrived. This was little Charles van Wie and his friend. Charles was hired to come early to the school-house and light the fire, so that the school would be warm by the time the teacher and the other boys and girls arrived. I did not know that I had pitched my camp just between the village and the school, on the way all the children would have to come. In America the school-house is always some distance from the village—this is so that mothers may not come running in and out every minute, and it is a good arrangement for other reasons. It gives every little boy and girl a walk, and the chance of having upon occasion extraordinary adventures.