He began to expatiate on the charms of this region, but seeing that we were plainly rather anxious to be off, finally concluded and let us go. I could not help thinking, as he looked after us, that perhaps he would like very much to be going himself.
From here on the scenery was so simple and yet so beautiful that it was like a dream—such a land as Goldsmith and Gray had in mind when they wrote. This little stream, the Maumee, was delightful. It was, as he said, paralleled by a canal nearly all the way into Defiance and between canal and river were many little summer cottages, quaint and idle looking.
It had become excessively hot, so much so that I felt that now, at last, I was beginning to sunburn badly, but in spite of this we had no thought of putting up the top or of seeking shelter by lingering in the shade. It was so hot that I perspired sitting in the car, but even so it was too lovely, just moving along with what breeze the motion provided. At Napoleon, Booth had bought a light rubber ball, and with this, a few miles out, we stopped to play. The automobile gave us this freedom to seek ideal nooks and secluded places, and thus disport ourselves. The grass and trees were still green, not burned. Wheat fields newly shorn or still standing had that radiant gold hue which so pleases the eye at this season of the year. It was so hot and still that even all insects seemed to have taken to cover. We tossed our ball in a green field opposite a grove and looking up I could see a lonely buzzard soaring in the sky. Truly this is my own, my native land, I said to myself. I have rejoiced in hundreds of days just like this. All the middle West is like it—this dry heat, these clear skies, this sleepy baking atmosphere. For hundreds of miles, in my mind’s eye, I could see people idling on their porches or under their trees, making the best of it. The farmer’s wain was creaking along in the sun, the cattle were idling in the water, swishing their tails. Girls and boys home from school for the summer were idling in hammocks, reading or loafing. Few great thoughts or turmoils were breeding in this region. It was a pleasant land of drowsy mind and idle eye—I could feel it.
By winding ways, but always with a glimpse of this same Maumee or its parallel canal, we arrived at Defiance, and a little while later, at dusk, at Hicksville. Both of these towns, like Napoleon, were of the temperament of which I am most fond—nebulous, speculative, dreamy. You could tell by their very looks that that definite commercial sense which was so marked in places farther East was not here abounding. They were still, as at Warsaw in my day, outside the keen, shrill whip of things. Everyone was not strutting around with the all-too-evident feeling that they must get on. (I hate greedy, commercial people.) Things were drifting in a slow, romantic, speculative way. Actually I said to Franklin, and he will bear witness to it, that now we were in the exact atmosphere which was most grateful to me. I looked on all the simple little streets, the one and a half story houses with sloping roofs, the rows of good trees and unfenced lawns, and wished and wished and wished. If one only could go back—supposing one could—unreel like a film, and then represent one’s life to oneself. What elisions would we not make, and what extensions! Some incidents I would make so much more perfect than they were—others would not be in the film at all.
In Defiance we all indulged in shaves, shoe shines, drinks. As we were nearing Hicksville we overtook two farmers—evidently brothers, on a load of hay. It was so beautiful, the charm of the land so great, that we were all in the best of spirits. To the south of us was a little town looking like one of those villages in Holland which you see over a wide stretch of flat land, a distant church spire or windmill being the most conspicuous object anywhere. Here it was a slate church steeple and a red factory chimney that stood up and broke the sky line. It was fairyland with a red sun, just sinking below the horizon, the trees taking on a smoky harmony in the distance. Spirals of gnats were in the air, and we were on one of those wonderful brick roads I have previously mentioned, running from Defiance to Hicksville, as smooth and picturesque to view as an old Dutch tile oven. Once we stopped the car to listen to the evening sounds, the calls of farmers after pigs, the mooing of cows, the rasping of guinea hens, and the last faint twitterings of birds and chickens. That evening hush, with a tinge of cool in the air, and the fragrant emanation of the soil and trees, was upon us. It needed only some voice singing somewhere, I thought, or the sound of a bell, to make it complete. And even those were added.
As we were idling so, these two farmers came along seated on a load of hay, making a truly Ruysdaelish picture in the amethyst light. We made sure to greet them.
“What town is that one there?” Franklin inquired, jovially.
“Squiresburg,” the driver replied, grinning. His brother was sitting far back on the hay.
“This is the road to Hicksville all right, isn’t it?” I put in.
“Yes, this is the road,” he returned.