scomforts, and one
gets so tired and hungry at night that the shortcomings of the
village hotel are overlooked, or not fully realized until seen the
next morning by the frank light of day.

Fonda is the occasion of these remarks upon New York hotels.

It was cloudy and threatening when we left Fonda at half-past
seven the next morning, and by ten the rain began to fall so
heavily and steadily that the roads, none too dry before, were
soon afloat.

It was slow going. At St. Johnsville we stopped to buy heavier
rubber coats. It did not seem possible we would get through the
day without coming to a stop, but, strange to relate, the machine
kept on doggedly all day, on the slow gear nearly every mile,
without a break of any kind.

It was bad enough from St. Johnsville to Herkimer, but the worst
was then to come.

When we came east from Utica to Herkimer, we followed the road on
the north side of the valley, and recalled it as hilly but very
dry and good. The Endurance Contest was out of Herkimer, through
Frankfort and along the canal on the south side of the valley. It
was a question whether to follow the road we knew was pretty good
or follow the contest route, which presumably was selected as the
better.

A liveryman at Herkimer said, "Take my advice and keep on the
north side of the valley; the road is hilly, but sandy and drier;
if you go through Frankfort, you will find some pretty fierce
going; the road is level but cut up and deep with mud,--keep on
the north side."

We should have followed that advice, the more so since it
coincided with our own impressions; but at the store where we
stopped for gasoline, a man who said he drove an automobile
advised the road through Frankfort as the better.

It was in Frankfort that several of the contestants in the
endurance run came to grief,--right on the main street of the
village. There was no sign of pavement, macadam, or gravel, just
deep, dark, rich muck; how deep no one could tell; a road so bad
it spoke volumes for the shiftlessness and lack of enterprise
prevailing in the village.

A little beyond Frankfort there is about a mile of State road,
laid evidently to furnish inhabitants an object lesson,--and laid
in vain.

A little farther on the black muck road leads between the canal
and towpath high up on the left, and a high board fence protecting
the railroad tracks on the right; in other words, the highway was
the low ground between two elevations. The