Indeed, the modern porcupine is as suspicious of pals of the Auto-comrade as the porcupines of the past were of sorcerers and witches—folk, by the way, who probably consorted with spirits no more malign than Auto-comrades. “What,” asked the porcupines of one another, “can they be up to, all alone there in those solitary huts? What honest man would live like that? Ah, they must be up to no good. They must be consorting with the Evil One. Well, then, away with them to the stake and the river!”
As a matter of fact, it probably was not the Evil One that these poor folk were consorting with, but the Good One. For what is a man’s Auto-comrade, anyway, but his own soul, or the same thing by what other name soever he likes to call it with which he divides the practical, conscious part of his brain, turn and turn about, share and share alike? And what is a man’s own soul but a small stream of the infinite, eternal water of life? And what is heaven but a vast harbor where myriad streams of soul flow down, returning at last to their Source in the bliss of perfect reunion? I believe that many a Salem witch was dragged to her death from sanctuary; for church is not exclusively connected with stained glass and collection-baskets. Church is also wherever you and your Auto-comrade can elude the starched throng and fall together, if only for a moment, on your knees.
Like the girl you left behind you, your Auto-comrade has much to gain by contrast with your flesh-and-blood associates, especially if this contrast is suddenly brought home to you after a too long separation from him. I shall never forget the thrill that was mine early one morning after two months of close, uninterrupted communion with one of my best and dearest friends. At the very instant when the turn of the road cut off that friend’s departing hand-wave, I was aware of a welcoming, almost boisterous shout from the hills of dream, and, turning quickly, beheld my long-lost Auto-comrade rushing eagerly down the slopes toward me.
Few joys may compare with the joy of such a sudden, unexpected reunion. It is like “the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.” No, this simile is too disloyal to my friend. Well, then, it is like a beaker full of the warm South when you are leaving a good beer country and are trying to reconcile yourself to ditch-water for the next few weeks. At any rate, similes or not, there were we two together again at last. What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and blood-red maple banners to the purple mountains of the Aroostook. And how we did take stock of the immediate past, chuckling to find that it had not been a quarter so bad as I had stupidly supposed. What gilded forest trails were those which we blazed into the glamourous land of to-morrow! And every other moment these recreative labors would be interrupted while I pressed between the pages of a note-book some butterfly or sunset leaf or quadruply fortunate clover which my Auto-comrade found and turned over to me. Between two of those pages, by the way, I afterward found the argument of this paper.
Then, when the first effervescence of our meeting had lost a little of its first, fine, carbonated sting, what Elysian hours we spent over the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller! Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over. These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its foot-notes, to our hearts’ content.
Such experiences, though, are all too rare with me. Why? Because my Auto-comrade is a rather particular person and will not associate with me unless I toe his mark.
“Come,” I propose to him, “let us go on a journey.”
“Hold hard,” says he, and looks me over appraisingly. “You know the rule of the Auto-comrades’ Union. We are supposed to associate with none but fairly able persons. Are you a fairly able person?”
If it turns out that I am not, he goes on a rampage, and begins to talk like an athletic trainer. The first thing he demands is that his would-be associate shall keep on hand a jolly good store of surplus vitality. You are expected to supply him exuberance somewhat as you supply gasolene to your motor.
Now, of course, there are in the world not a few invalids and other persons of low physical vitality whose Auto-comrades happen to have sufficient gasolene to keep them both running, if only on short rations. Most of these cases, however, are pathological. They have hot boxes at both ends of the machine, and their progress is destined all too soon to cease and determine. The rest of these cases are the rare exceptions which prove the rule. For unexuberant yet unpathological pals of the Auto-comrade are as rare as harmonious households in which the efforts of a devoted and blissful wife support an able-bodied husband.