e day comes in.

He has come from the west and has had heavy weather. He asks about the
roads east. Gibb Ogle, our leading pessimist, hastens to inform him that
very likely the roads are impassable, because the Highway Commissioners
have been improving them. Out our way road improvement consists of
tearing the roads out with a scraper and heaping them up in the middle.
It takes a road almost a year to recover from a good, thorough case of
improvement.

The stranger goes on dejectedly, and about nine A.M. young Andy Link
roars in with his father's car, which he has taken away from the old man
and converted into a racer by the simple process of taking off the
muffler and increasing the noise to one hundred miles per hour. Andy
declares that there has been no rain to the northwest and that he has
done sixty miles already this morning, but can't get his carbureter to
working properly, as usual. By this time several owners and a dozen
critics have assembled, and the morning debate on gasoline versus motor
spirit takes place. It ends a tie and both sides badly winded, when
Pelty Amthorne drives in, very mad. He has been over to Paynesville and
back. This is only twenty miles, but owing to the juicy and elusive
condition of the roads, his rear wheels have traveled upward of two
thousand miles in negotiating the distance and he has worn out two rear
casings.

Right here I wish to state that Homeburg roads are not always muddy. We
average three months of beautiful, smooth, resilient and joltless roads
each year. The remaining nine months, however, I mention with pain.
Illinois boosters say our beautiful rich black soil averages ten feet in
depth, but I think this understates the case--at least our beautiful
black dirt roads seem to be deeper than that in the spring. What we need
in the spring in Illinois are locks and harbor lights, and the man who
invents an automobile buoyant enough to float on its stomach and paddle
its way swiftly to and fro on the heaving bosom of our April roads will
be a public benefactor.

Pelty is justly indignant, because he had hoped to get another thousand
miles of actual travel out of his tires. We sympathize with him, but in
the middle of his grief Chet Frazier drives up. When he sees his ancient
enemy, he climbs out of his car, comes hastily over to where Pelty is
erupting, and starts trading autos with him.

Did you ever hear a couple of seasoned horse traders discussing each
other's wares?