On a June day, years ago, I was walking along our country road. At the top of a steep little hill I paused to rest and let my eyes luxuriate in the billowing greens and tender blues of the valley below. While I stood there my neighbor came slowly up from the garden, her apron over her head, a basket of green peas on her arm.

"What a view you have up here on your hill!" I said.

She drew back her apron and turned to look off. "Yes," she said indulgently; "ye-e-s." Then her face brightened and she turned to me with real animation: "But it\'s better in winter when the leaves is off, \'n\' you c\'n see the passin\' on the lower road."

Fresh from the city as I was, with all its prejudices and intolerance upon me, I was partly amused, partly irritated, by her answer. So all this glory of greenness, all this wonder of[Pg 115] the June woodland, was merely tolerated, while the baffled observer waited for the leaves to be "off"! And all for the sake of seeing—what? A few lumber wagons, forsooth, loaded with ties for the railway, a few cows driven along morning and evening, a few children trudging to and from school, the postman\'s buggy on its daily rounds, twice a week the meat cart, once a week the grocery wagon, once a month the "tea-man," and now and then a neighbor\'s team on its way to the feed-store or the blacksmith\'s shop down at "the Corners."

For this, then,—not for the beauty of the winter landscape, but for this poor procession of wayfarers, my neighbors waited with impatience. If I could, I would have snatched up their view bodily and carried it off with me, back to my own farm for my own particular delectation. It should never again have shoved itself in their way.

But since that time I have lived longer in the country. If I have not made it my home for all twelve months, I have dwelt in it from early April to mid-December, and now, when I think of my neighbor\'s remark, it is with growing[Pg 116] comprehension. I realize that I, in my patronizing one-sidedness, was quite wrong.

City folk go to the country, as they say, to "get away"—justifiable enough, perhaps, or perhaps not. They seek spots remote from the centres; they choose deserted districts, untraveled roads; they criticize their ancestors unmercifully for their custom of building houses close to the road and keeping the front dooryard clear of shrubbery. But they who built those homes which are our summer refuge did not want to get away; they wanted to get together. The country was not their respite, it was their life, and the road was to them the emblem of race solidarity—nay, more than the emblem, it was the means to it. This is still the case with the country people, and as I live among them I am coming to a realization of the meaning of the Road.

In the city one can never get just this. There are streets, of course, but by their very multiplicity and complexity they lose their individual impressiveness and are merged in that great whole, the City. One recoils from them and takes refuge in the sense of one\'s own home.[Pg 117]

But in the country there is just the Road. Recoil from it? One\'s heart goes out to it. The road is a part of home, the part that reaches out to our friends and draws them to us or brings us to them. It is our outdoor clubhouse, it is the avenue of the Expected and the Unexpected, it is the Home Road.

In a sense it does no more for us, and in some ways much less, than our city streets do. Along these, too, our tradesmen\'s carts come to our doors, along these our friends must fare as they arrive or depart; we seek the streets at our outgoings and our incomings. But they are, after all, strictly a means. We use them, but when we enter our homes we forget them, or try to. Our individual share in the street is not large. So much goes on and goes by that has only the most general bearing on our interests that we cease to give it our attention at all. It is not good form to watch the street, because it is not worth while. When children\'s voices fly in at our windows, we assume that they are other people\'s children, and they usually are. When we hear teams, we expect them to go by, and they usually do. When we hear a cab door slam, we take it for granted[Pg 118] that it is before some other house, and usually it is. And if, having nothing better to do, we perchance walk to the window and glance out between the curtains, we are repaid by seeing nothing interesting and by feeling a little shamefaced besides.

Not so in the country. What happens along the Road is usually our intimate concern. Most of those who go by on it are our own acquaintances and neighbors, and are interesting as such. The rest are strangers, and interesting as such. For it is the rarity of the stranger that gives him his piquancy.

And so in the country it is both good form and worth while to watch the Road—to "keep an eye out," as they say. When Jonathan and I first came to the farm, we were incased in a hard incrustation of city ways. When teams passed, we did not look up; when a wagon rattled, we did not know whose it was, and we said we did not care. When one of our neighbors remarked, casually, "Heard Bill Smith\'s team go by at half-past eleven last night. Wonder if the\'s anythin\' wrong down his way," we stared at one another in amazement, and wondered, "Now, how in the[Pg 119] world did he know it was Bill Smith\'s team?" We smiled over the story of a postmistress who had the ill luck to be selling stamps when a carriage passed. She hastily shoved them out, and ran to the side window—too late! "Sakes!" she sighed; "that\'s the second I\'ve missed to-day!" We smiled, but I know now that if I had been in that postmistress\'s place I should have felt exactly as she did.

When we began to realize the change in ourselves, we were at first rather sheepish and apologetic about it. We fell into the way of sitting where we could naturally glance out of the windows, but we did this casually, as if by chance, and said nothing about it. When August came, and dusk fell early and lamps were lighted at supper-time, I drew down the shades.

But one night Jonathan said, carelessly, "Why do you pull them all the way down?"

"Why not?" I asked, with perhaps just a suspicion.

"Oh," he said, "it always seems so cheerful from the road to look in at a lighted window."

I left them up, but I noticed that Jonathan[Pg 120] kept a careful eye on the shadowy road outside. Was he trying to cheer it by pleasant looks, I wondered, or was he just trying to see all that went by?

Jonathan\'s seat is not so good as mine for observation. A big deutzia bush looms between his window and the road, while at my window only the tips of a waxberry bush obscure the view, and there is a door beside me. Therefore Jonathan was distinctly at a disadvantage. He offered to change seats, suggesting that there was a draft where I was, and that the light was bad for my eyes, but I found that I did not mind either of these things.

One day a team passed while Jonathan was carving. He looked up too late, hesitated, then said, rather consciously: "Who was that? Did you see?"

"I don\'t know," I said, with a far-away, impersonal air, as though the matter had no interest for me. But I hadn\'t the heart to keep up the pose, and I added: "Perhaps you\'ll know. It was a white horse, and a business wagon with red wheels, and the man wore a soft felt hat, and there was a dog on the seat beside him."[Pg 121]

Before I had finished, Jonathan was grinning delightedly. "Suppose we shake these city ways," he said. He deliberately got up, raised the shades, pushed back a curtain, and moved a jug of goldenrod. "There! Can you see better now?" he asked.

And I said cheerfully, "Yes, quite a good deal better. And after this, Jonathan, when you hear a team coming, why don\'t you stop carving till it goes by?"

"I will," said Jonathan.

It was our final capitulation, and since then we have been much more comfortable. We run to the window whenever we feel inclined, and we leave our shades up at dusk without apology or circumlocution. We are coming to know our neighbors\' teams by their sound, and we are proud of it. Why, indeed, should we be ashamed of this human interest? Why should we be elated that we can recognize a bluebird by his flight, and ashamed of knowing our neighbor\'s old bay by his gait? Why should we boast of our power to recognize the least murmur of the deceptive grosbeak, and not take pride in being able to "spot" Bill Smith\'s team by the[Pg 122] peculiar rattle of its board bottom as it crosses the bridge by the mill? Is he not of more value than many grosbeaks? But how can we love our neighbor if we do not pay some attention to him—him and his horse and his cart and ............