I feel as if I would like to get hold of the Rev. J. Cadden even at this late date and shake him up a bit. I won’t say kick him, but——
CHAPTER XX
THE CAPITAL OF THE FRA
Next morning it was raining, and to pass the time before breakfast I examined a large packet of photographs which Speed had left with me the night before—mementoes of that celebrated pioneer venture which had for its object the laying out of the new Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco. We had already en route heard so much of this trip that by now we were fairly familiar with it. It had been organized by a very wealthy manufacturer, and he and his very good looking young wife had been inclined to make a friend of Speed, so that he saw much that would not ordinarily have fallen under his vision. I was never tired of hearing of this particular female, whom I would like to have met. Speed described her as small, plump, rosy and very determined,—an iron-willed, spiteful, jealous little creature—in other words, a real woman, who had inherited more money than her husband had ever made. Whenever anything displeased her greatly she would sit in the car and weep, or even yell. She refused to stay at any hotel which did not just suit her and had once in a Chicago hotel diningroom slapped the face of her spouse because he dared to contradict her, and another time in some famous Kansas City hostelry she had thrown the bread at him. Both were always anxious to meet only the best people, only Mr. Manufacturer would insist upon including prize-fighters and auto-speed record men, greatly to her displeasure.
I wish you might have seen these pictures selected by Speed to illustrate his trip. Crossing a great country like America, from coast to coast, visiting new towns each day and going by a route hitherto not much followed, one might gather much interesting information and many pictures (if no more than postcards) of beautiful and striking things.
Do you imagine there were any in this collection which Speed left with me? Not one! The views, if you will believe me, were all of mired cars and rutty roads and great valleys which might have been attractive or impressive if they had been properly photographed. The car was always in the foreground, spoiling everything. He had selected dull scenes of cars in procession—the same cars always in the same procession, only in different order, and never before any radically different scene.
As a matter of fact, as I looked at these photographs I could tell exactly how Speed’s mind worked, and it was about the way the average mind would work under such circumstances. Here was a great automobile tour, including say forty or fifty cars or more. The cars contained important men and women, or were supposed to, because the owners had money. Ergo, the cars and their occupants were the great things about this trip, and wherever the cars were, there was the interest—never elsewhere. Hence, whenever the cars rolled into a town or along a great valley or near a great mountain, let the town be never so interesting, or the mountain, or the valley, the great thing to photograph was the cars in the procession. It never seemed to occur to the various photographers to do anything different. Cars, cars, cars,—here they were, and always in a row and always the same. I finally put the whole bunch aside wearily and gave them back to him, letting him think that they were very, very remarkable—which they were.
Setting off after breakfast we encountered not the striking mountain effects of the region about Delaware Water Gap and Stroudsburg, nor yet the fine valley views along the Susquehanna, but a spent hill country—the last receding heaves and waves of all that mountainous country east of us. As we climbed up and up out of Warsaw onto a ridge which seemed to command all the country about for miles, I thought of the words of that motorcyclist at Owego who said he had come through Warsaw and that you climbed five hills to get in, but only one to get out, going east. It was true. In our westward course the hills we were to climb were before us. You could see two or three of them—the road ascending straight like a ribbon, ending suddenly at the top of each one and jumping as a thin whitish line to the next hill crest beyond.
The rain in which we began our day was already ceasing, so that only a few miles out we could put down the top. Presently the sun began to break through fleecy, whitish clouds, giving the whole world an opalescent tinge, and then later, as we neared East Aurora, it became as brilliant as any sun lover could wish.
A Sabbath stillness was in the air. One could actually feel the early morning preparations for church. As we passed various farmyards, the crowing of roosters and the barking of dogs seemed especially loud. Seeing a hen cross the road and only escape being struck by the car by a hair’s breath, Franklin announced that he had solved the mystery of why hens invariably cross the road, or seem to, in front of any swift moving vehicle.
“You don’t mean to tell me that it’s because they want to get to the other side, do you?” I inquired, thereby frustrating the possibility of the regulation Joe Miller.