THE FRIENDLY ROAD(友好的路)

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THE FRIENDLY ROAD

by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

A WORD TO HIM WHO OPENS

THIS BOOK

I did not plan when I began writing these chapters to make an entire

book, but only to put down the more or less unusual impressions, the

events and adventures, of certain quiet pilgrimages in country roads. But

when I had written down all of these things, I found I had material in

plenty.

"What shall I call it now that I have written it?" I asked myself.

At first I thought I should call it "Adventures on the Road," or "The

Country Road," or something equally simple, for I would not have the title

arouse any appetite which the book itself could not satisfy. One pleasant

evening I was sitting on my porch with my dog sleeping near me, and

Harriet not far away rocking and sewing, and as I looked out across the

quiet fields I could see in the distance a curving bit of the town road. I

could see the valley below it and the green hill beyond, and my mind went

out swiftly along the country road which I had so recently travelled on

foot, and I thought with deep satisfaction of all the people I had met on my

pilgrimages--the Country Minister with his problems, the buoyant

Stanleys, Bill Hahn the Socialist, the Vedders in their garden, the Brush

Peddler. I thought of the Wonderful City, and of how for a time I had been

caught up into its life. I thought of the men I met at the livery stable,

especially Healy, the wit, and of that strange Girl of the Street. And it was

good to think of them all living around me, not so very far away,

connected with me through darkness and space by a certain mysterious

human cord. Most of all I love that which I cannot see beyond the hill.

"Harriet," I said aloud, "it grows more wonderful every year how full

the world is of friendly people!"

So I got up quickly and came in here to my room, and taking a fresh

sheet of paper I wrote down the title of my new book:

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

"The Friendly Road."

I invite you to travel with me upon this friendly road. You may find, as

I did, something which will cause you for a time, to forget yourself into

contentment. But if you chance to be a truly serious person, put down my

book. Let nothing stay your hurried steps, nor keep you from your way.

As for those of us who remain, we will loiter as much as ever we

please. We'll take toll of these spring days, we'll stop wherever evening

overtakes us, we'll eat the food of hospitality--and make friends for life!

DAVID GRAYSON.

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

CHAPTER I. I LEAVE MY FARM

"Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have lived light in

spring?"

It is eight o'clock of a sunny spring morning. I have been on the road

for almost three hours. At five I left the town of Holt, before six I had

crossed the railroad at a place called Martin's Landing, and an hour ago, at

seven, I could see in the distance the spires of Nortontown. And all the

morning as I came tramping along the fine country roads with my pack-

strap resting warmly on my shoulder, and a song in my throat--just

nameless words to a nameless tune--and all the birds singing, and all the

brooks bright under their little bridges, I knew that I must soon step aside

and put down, if I could, some faint impression of the feeling of this time

and place. I cannot hope to convey any adequate sense of it all--of the

feeling of lightness, strength, clearness, I have as I sit here under this

maple tree--but I am going to write as long as ever I am happy at it, and

when I am no longer happy at it, why, here at my very hand lies the

pleasant country road, stretching away toward newer hills and richer

scenes.

Until to-day I have not really been quite clear in my own mind as to

the step I have taken. My sober friend, have you ever tried to do anything

that the world at large considers not quite sensible, not quite sane? Try it!

It is easier to commit a thundering crime. A friend of mine delights in

walking to town bareheaded, and I fully believe the neighbourhood is

more disquieted thereby than it would be if my friend came home drunken

or failed to pay his debts.

Here I am then, a farmer, forty miles from home in planting time,

taking his ease under a maple tree and writing in a little book held on his

knee! Is not that the height of absurdity? Of all my friends the Scotch

Preacher was the only one who seemed to understand why it was that I

must go away for a time. Oh, I am a sinful and revolutionary person!

When I left home last week, if you could have had a truthful picture of

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

me--for is there not a photography so delicate that it will catch the dim

thought-shapes which attend upon our lives?--if you could have had such a

truthful picture of me, you would have seen, besides a farmer named

Grayson with a gray bag hanging from his shoulder, a strange company

following close upon his steps. Among this crew you would have made

out easily:

Two fine cows. Four Berkshire pigs. One team of gray horses, the old

mare a little lame in her right foreleg. About fifty hens, four cockerels, and

a number of ducks and geese.

More than this--I shall offer no explanation in these writings of any

miracles that may appear--you would have seen an entirely respectable old

farmhouse bumping and hobbling along as best it might in the rear. And in

the doorway, Harriet Grayson, in her immaculate white apron, with the

veritable look in her eyes which she wears when I am not comporting

myself with quite the proper decorum.

Oh, they would not let me go! How they all followed clamoring after

me. My thoughts coursed backward faster than ever I could run away. If

you could have heard that motley crew of the barnyard as I did-- the hens

all cackling, the ducks quacking, the pigs grunting, and the old mare

neighing and stamping, you would have thought it a miracle that I escaped

at all.

So often we think in a superior and lordly manner of our possessions,

when, as a matter of fact, we do not really possess them, they possess us.

For ten years I have been the humble servant, attending upon the

commonest daily needs of sundry hens, ducks, geese, pigs, bees, and of a

fussy and exacting old gray mare. And the habit of servitude, I find, has

worn deep scars upon me. I am almost like the life prisoner who finds the

door of his cell suddenly open, and fears to escape. Why, I had almost

become ALL farmer.

On the first morning after I left home I awoke as usual about five

o'clock with the irresistible feeling that I must do the milking. So well

disciplined had I become in my servitude that I instinctively thrust my leg

out of bed--but pulled it quickly back in again, turned over, drew a long,

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

luxurious breath, and said to myself:

"Avaunt cows! Get thee behind me, swine! Shoo, hens!"

Instantly the clatter of mastery to which I had responded so quickly for

so many years grew perceptibly fainter, the hens cackled less

domineeringly, the pigs squealed less insistently, and as for the strutting

cockerel, that lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in the middle of a

crow, and his voice gurgled away in a spasm of astonishment. As for the

old farmhouse, it grew so dim I could scarcely see it at all! Having thus

published abroad my Declaration of Independence, nailed my defiance to

the door, and otherwise established myself as a free person, I turned over

in my bed and took another delicious nap.

Do you know, friend, we can be free of many things that dominate our

lives by merely crying out a rebellious "Avaunt!"

But in spite of this bold beginning, I assure you it required several

days to break the habit of cows and hens. The second morning I awakened

again at five o'clock, but my leg did not make for the side of the bed; the

third morning I was only partially awakened, and on the fourth morning I

slept like a millionaire (or at least I slept as a millionaire is supposed to

sleep!) until the clock struck seven.

For some days after I left home--and I walked out as casually that

morning as though I were going to the barn--I scarcely thought or tried to

think of anything but the Road. Such an unrestrained sense of liberty, such

an exaltation of freedom, I have not known since I was a lad. When I came

to my farm from the city many years ago it was as one bound, as one who

had lost out in the World's battle and was seeking to get hold again

somewhere upon the realities of life. I have related elsewhere how I thus

came creeping like one sore wounded from the field of battle, and how,

among our hills, in the hard, steady labour in the soil of the fields, with

new and simple friends around me, I found a sort of rebirth or resurrection.

I that was worn out, bankrupt both physically and morally, learned to live

again. I have achieved something of high happiness in these years,

something I know of pure contentment; and I have learned two or three

deep and simple things about life: I have learned that happiness is not to

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

be had for the seeking, but comes quietly to him who pauses at his

difficult task and looks upward. I have learned that friendship is very

simple, and, more than all else, I have learned the lesson of being quiet, of

looking out across the meadows and hills, and of trusting a little in God.

And now, for the moment, I am regaining another of the joys of youth-

-that of the sense of perfect freedom. I made no plans when I left home, I

scarcely chose the direction in which I was to travel, but drifted out, as a

boy might, into the great busy world. Oh, I have dreamed of that! It seems

almost as though, after ten years, I might again really touch the highest

joys of adventure!

So I took the Road as it came, as a man takes a woman, for better or

worse--I took the Road, and the farms along it, and the sleepy little

villages, and the streams from the hillsides--all with high enjoyment. They

were good coin in my purse! And when I had passed the narrow horizon of

my acquaintanceship, and reached country new to me, it seemed as though

every sense I had began to awaken. I must have grown dull, unconsciously,

in the last years there on my farm. I cannot describe the eagerness of

discovery I felt at climbing each new hill, nor the long breath I took at the

top of it as I surveyed new stretches of pleasant countryside.

Assuredly this is one of the royal moments of all the year--fine, cool,

sparkling spring weather. I think I never saw the meadows richer and

greener--and the lilacs are still blooming, and the catbirds and orioles are

here. The oaks are not yet in full leaf, but the maples have nearly reached

their full mantle of verdure--they are very beautiful and charming to see.

It is curious how at this moment of the year all the world seems astir. I

suppose there is no moment in any of the seasons when the whole army of

agriculture, regulars and reserves, is so fully drafted for service in the

fields. And all the doors and windows, both in the little villages and on the

farms, stand wide open to the sunshine, and all the women and girls are

busy in the yards and gardens. Such a fine, active, gossipy, adventurous

world as it is at this moment of the year!

It is the time, too, when all sorts of travelling people are afoot. People

who have been mewed up in the cities for the winter now take to the open

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

road--all the peddlers and agents and umbrella-menders, all the nursery

salesmen and fertilizer agents, all the tramps and scientists and poets--all

abroad in the wide sunny roads. They, too, know well this hospitable

moment of the spring; they, too, know that doors and hearts are open and

that even into dull lives creeps a bit of the spirit of adventure. Why, a

farmer will buy a corn planter, feed a tramp, or listen to a poet twice as

easily at this time of year as at any other!

For several days I found myself so fully occupied with the bustling life

of the Road that I scarcely spoke to a living soul, but strode straight ahead.

The spring has been late and cold: most of the corn and some of the

potatoes are not yet in, and the tobacco lands are still bare and brown.

Occasionally I stopped to watch some ploughman in the fields: I saw with

a curious, deep satisfaction how the moist furrows, freshly turned,

glistened in the warm sunshine. There seemed to be something right and

fit about it, as well as human and beautiful. Or at evening I would stop to

watch a ploughman driving homeward across his new brown fields,

raising a cloud of fine dust from the fast drying furrow crests. The low sun

shining through the dust and glorifying it, the weary-stepping horses, the

man all sombre-coloured like the earth itself and knit into the scene as

though a part of it, made a picture exquisitely fine to see.

And what a joy I had also of the lilacs blooming in many a dooryard,

the odour often trailing after me for a long distance in the road, and of the

pungent scent at evening in the cool hollows of burning brush heaps and

the smell of barnyards as I went by--not unpleasant, not offensive--and

above all, the deep, earthy, moist odour of new-ploughed fields.

And then, at evening, to hear the sound of voices from the dooryards

as I pass quite unseen; no words, but just pleasant, quiet intonations of

human voices, borne through the still air, or the low sounds of cattle in the

barnyards, quieting down for the night, and often, if near a village, the

distant, slumbrous sound of a church bell, or even the rumble of a train--

how good all these sounds are! They have all come to me again this week

with renewed freshness and impressiveness. I am living deep again!

It was not, indeed, until last Wednesday that I began to get my fill,

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

temporarily, of the outward satisfaction of the Road--the primeval takings

of the senses--the mere joys of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. But on

that day I began to wake up; I began to have a desire to know something

of all the strange and interesting people who are working in their fields, or

standing invitingly in their doorways, or so busily afoot in the country

roads. Let me add, also, for this is one of the most important parts of my

present experience, that this new desire was far from being wholly esoteric.

I had also begun to have cravings which would not in the least be satisfied

by landscapes or dulled by the sights and sounds of the road. A whiff here

and there from a doorway at mealtime had made me long for my own

home, for the sight of Harriet calling from the steps: "Dinner, David."

But I had covenanted with myself long before starting that I would

literally "live light in spring." It was the one and primary condition I made

with myself--and made with serious purpose--and when I came away I had

only enough money in my pocket and sandwiches in my pack to see me

through the first three or four days. Any man may brutally pay his way

anywhere, but it is quite another thing to be accepted by your humankind

not as a paid lodger but as a friend. Always, it seems to me, I have wanted

to submit myself, and indeed submit the stranger, to that test. Moreover,

how can any man look for true adventure in life if he always knows to a

certainty where his next meal is coming from? In a world so completely

dominated by goods, by things, by possessions, and smothered by security,

what fine adventure is left to a man of spirit save the adventure of

poverty?

I do not mean by this the adventure of involuntary poverty, for I

maintain that involuntary poverty, like involuntary riches, is a credit to no

man. It is only as we dominate life that we really live. What I mean here,

if I may so express it, is an adventure in achieved poverty. In the lives of

such true men as Francis of Assisi and Tolstoi, that which draws the world

to them in secret sympathy is not that they lived lives of poverty, but

rather, having riches at their hands, or for the very asking, that they chose

poverty as the better way of life.

As for me, I do not in the least pretend to have accepted the final logic

THE FRIENDLY ROAD

of an achieved poverty. I have merely abolished temporarily from my life

a few hens and cows, a comfortable old farmhouse, and--certain other

emoluments and hereditaments--but remain the slave of sundry cloth upon

my back and sundry articles in my gray bag--including a fat pocket

volume or so, and a tin whistle. Let them pass now. To-morrow I may wish

to attempt life with still less. I might survive without my battered copy of

"Montaigne" or even submit to existence without that sense of distant

companionship symbolized by a postage-stamp, and as for trousers--

In this deceptive world, how difficult attainment is perfection!

No, I expect I shall continue for a long time to owe the worm his silk,

the beast his hide, the sheep his wool, and the cat his perfume! What I am

seeking is something as simple and as quiet as the trees or the hills --just

to look out around me at the pleasant countryside, to enjoy a little of this

show, to meet (and to help a little if I may) a few human beings, and thus

to get nearly into the sweet kernel of human life). My friend, you may or

may not think this a worthy object; if you do not, stop here, go no further

with me; but if you do, why, we'll exchange great words on the road; we'll

look up at the sky together, we'll see and hear the finest things in this

world! We'll enjoy the sun! We'll live light in spring!

Until last Tuesday, then, I was carried easily and comfortably onward

by the corn, the eggs, and the honey of my past labours, and before

Wednesday noon I began to experience in certain vital centres

recognizable symptoms of a variety of discomfort anciently familiar to

man. And it was all the sharper because I did not know how or where I

could assuage it. In all my life, in spite of various ups and downs in a fat

world, I don't think I was ever before genuinely hungry. Oh, I've been

hungry in a reasonable, civilized way, but I have always known where in

an hour or so I could get all I wanted to eat--a condition accountable, in

this world, I am convinced, for no end of stupidity. But to be both

physically and, let us say, psychologically hungry, and not to know where

or how to get anything to eat, adds something to the zest of life.

By noon on Wednesday, then, I was reduced quite to a point of

necessity. But where was I to begin, and how? I know from long

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THEFRIENDLYROAD1THEFRIENDLYROADbyDOUBLEDAY,PAGE&COMPANYTHEFRIENDLYROAD2AWORDTOHIMWHOOPENSTHISBOOKIdidnotplanwhenIbeganwritingthesechapterstomakeanentirebook,butonlytoputdownthemoreorlessunusualimpressions,theeventsandadventures,ofcertainquietpilgrimagesincountryroads.ButwhenIhadwrittendownallofthese...

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