I was walking between rugged farms on the edge of the oil country in western Pennsylvania.
The road, almost dry after several days of rain, was gay with butterfly-haunted puddles. The grotesque swain who gave me a lift in his automobile for a mile is worth a page, but we will only say that his photograph would have contributed to the gaiety of nations—that he was the carved peach-stone on the necklace of the day.
There was a complacent cat in a doorway, that should have been named “scrambled eggs and milk,” so mongrel was his overcoat. There was a philosophic grasshopper reading inscriptions in a lonely cemetery, with whom I had a long and silent interchange of spirit. Even the graveyard was full of sun.
On and on led the merry morning. At length came noon, and a meal given with heartiness, as easily plucked as a red apple. For half an hour after dinner in that big farm-house we sat and talked religion.
O pagan in the cities, the brand of one’s belief is still important in the hayfield. I was delighted to discover this household held by conviction to the brotherhood of which I was still a nominal member. Their lingo was a taste of home. “Our People,” “Our Plea,” “The pious unimmersed.” Thus did they lead themselves into paths of solemnity.
Then, in the last five minutes of my stay, I gave them my poem-sermon. The pamphlet made them stare, if it did not make them think.
Splendor after splendor rolled in upon the highway from the four corners at heaven. Why then should I complain, if about four o’clock the prosy old world emerged again?
The wagon-track now followed a section of the Pennsylvania railroad, and railroads are anathema in my eyes when I am afoot. There appeared no promising way of escape. And now the steel rails led into a region where there had been rain, even this morning. More than once I had to take to the ties to go on. When the mud was at all passable I walked in it by preference, fortifying myself with these philosophizings:—
“Cinders are sterile. They blast man and nature, but the black earth renews all. Mud upon the shoes is not a contamination but a sign of progress, eloquent as sweat upon the brow. Who knows but the feet are the roots of a man? Who knows but rain on the road may help him to grow? Maybe the stature and breadth of farmers is due to their walking behind the plough in the damp soil. Only an aviator or a bird has a right to spurn the ground. All the rest of us must furrow our way. Thus will our cores be enriched, thus will we give fruit after our kind.”
Whistling pretty hard, I made my way. And now I had to choose between my rule to flee from the railroad, and my rule to ask for hospitality before dark.