A Traveler at Forty

by Theodore Dreiser

Not knowing my way through the woods adjacent and having spent much time in this way I finally decided to take a train or conveyance of some kind. But there was no train to be had for some time to come. The trains there were did not run my way and no “fly” would convey me, as one bar mistress informed me, because there was a hard hill to climb and the rain which had fallen during the day had made the roads bad. I began to meditate returning to the inn. Finally the lady observed, “I can tell you how to get there, if you want to walk. It’s not more than an hour and it is a perfectly good road all the way.” She drew with her finger an outline of the twists of the road. “If you’re not afraid of a few screech owls, there’s nothing to harm you. You go to the bridge up here, cross it and take the first road to your left. When you come to a culvert about a mile out you will find three roads dividing there. One goes down the hollow to somewhere, I forgot the name; one goes up the hill to Bridgely Level, it’s a bridle path; and one goes to the right. It’s a smooth, even road—that’s the one you want.”

It was a lovely night. The moon overhead was clear and bright and the fog gave the fields a white eerie look. As we walked, my friend regaled me with what he said was a peculiar custom among English traveling men. At all English inns there is what is known as the traveling men’s club. The man who has been present at any inn on any stated occasion for the greatest number of hours or days is ipso facto, president of this club. The traveling man who has been there next longest if only for ten minutes less than the first, or more than the third, is vice president. Every inn serves what is known as the traveling man’s dinner at twelve o’clock or thereabouts and he who is president by virtue of the qualifications above described, is entitled to sit at the head of the table and carve and serve the roast. The vice president, if there be one, sits at the foot of the table and carves and serves the fowl. When there are two or more traveling men present, enough to provide a president and a vice president for this dinner, there is a regular order of procedure to be observed. The president arriving takes his seat first at the head of the table; the vice president then takes his place at the foot of the table. The president, when the roast beef is served, lifts the cover of the dish and says, “Mr. Vice President, we have here, I see, some roast beef.” The vice president then lifts the cover of his dish and says, “Mr. President we have here, I see, some roast goose.” “Gentlemen,” then says the president, bowing to the others present, “the dinner is for all,” and begins serving the roast. The vice president later does his duty in turn. The next day in all likelihood, the vice president or some other becomes president, and so it goes. My little Scotchman was most interested in telling me this, for it appealed to his fancy as it did to mine and I could see he relished the honor of being president in his turn.

It was while he was telling this that we saw before us three paths, the middle one and the one to the right going up through the dark woods, the one to the left merely skirting the woods and keeping out in the light.

“Let’s see, it’s the left you want, isn’t it?” he asked.

“No, it’s the right,” I replied.

“I think she said the left,” he cautioned. “Well, anyhow here’s a sign post. You lift me up and I’ll read what it says.”

It wasn’t visible from the ground.

I caught him about the legs and hoisted him aloft and he peered closely at all three signs. He was a dapper, light little man.

“You’re right,” he said.

We shook hands and wished each other luck. He struck off back along the road he had come in the fog and I mounted musingly through the woods. It was dark and delightfully odorous, the fog in the trees, struck by the moonlight, looking like moving sheeted ghosts. I went on gaily expecting to hear a screech owl but not one sounded. After perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes of walking I came out into the open road and then I found that I really did not know where Bridgely Level was after all. There was no sign.