“Hallo-o-o!”
“Hallo! What do you want?”
“This the right road to Martinsville?”
“Straight on!”
How often this little hail and farewell occurred outside houses set back far from the road!
And the night lights of machines coming toward us were once more as picturesque as those east of Warsaw, New York. From afar we could see them coming along this flat bottomland, like giant fireflies, their rays, especially when they swept about turns, seeming to stand out before them like the long feeling antennæ of insects, white and cautious. They were all headed in the direction of Gosport, though it did not seem quite possible that they were all going there.
In this warm, sensuous wind that was blowing here, it seemed as though nature must be about some fruitful labor. Sometimes a night achieves a quality of this sort, something so human and sympathetic that it is like a seeking hand. I sat back in the car meditating on all I had seen, how soon now we would be in Indianapolis and Carmel,—and then this trip would be over. Already with turns and twists and bypaths we had registered about two thousand miles. We had crossed four states and traversed this fifth one from end to end nearly. I had seen every place in which I had ever lived up to sixteen years of age, and touched, helplessly, on every pleasant and unpleasant memory that I had known in that period. The land had yielded a strange crop of memories and of characteristics to be observed. What did I think of all I had seen, I asked myself. Had the trip been worth while? Was it wise to disinter those shades of the past and brood over them? I recalled the comment of the poet to whom I had given the reception when I told him I was coming out here. “You won’t get anything out of it. It will bore you.” But had I been bored? Had I not gotten something out of it? Somehow the lines of the ghost in Hamlet kept repeating themselves:
“I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain time to walk the earth—”
Martinsville, about half way to Indianapolis, counting from Gosport, was another county seat, and in stopping there for a shave and a mouthful of something to eat, I learned that this, also, was a locally celebrated watering place, that there were not less than six different sanatoriums here, and always as many as fifteen hundred patients taking the baths and drinking the water for rheumatism and gout—and I had scarcely ever heard of the place. The center of the town looked as though it might be enjoying some form of prosperity, for the court house on all sides was surrounded by large and rather tasteful and even metropolitan looking shops. This portion of the city was illuminated by five-lamp standards and even boasted two or three small fire signs. I began to wonder when, if ever, these towns would take on more than the significance of just newness and prosperity. Or is it better that people should live well always, rather than that their haunts should be lighted by the fires of tragedy? Did Rome really need to be sacked? Did Troy need to fall?
Franklin seemed to consider that peace and human comfort were of more import than great tragic records, and I thought of this, but to no purpose. One can never solve the riddle, really. It twists and turns, heaves and changes color, like a cauldron that glows and bubbles but is never still.