ve, there was friction in the
staff--and who can wonder that on Fridays, at four o'clock, a real
holiday started for me: two days ahead with wife and child, and going
and coming--the drive.

I made thirty-six of these trips: seventy-two drives in all. I think
I could still rehearse every smallest incident of every single one
of them. With all their weirdness, with all their sometimes dangerous
adventure--most of them were made at night, and with hardly ever any
regard being paid to the weather or to the state of the roads--they
stand out in the vast array of memorable trifles that constitute the
story of my life as among the most memorable ones. Seven drives seem,
as it were, lifted above the mass of others as worthy to be described
in some detail--as not too trivial to detain for an hour or so a patient
reader's kind attention. Not that the others lack in interest for
myself; but there is little in them of that mildly dramatic, stirring
quality which might perhaps make their recital deserving of being heard
beyond my own frugal fireside. Strange to say, only one of the seven
is a return trip. I am afraid that the prospect of going back to rather
uncongenial work must have dulled my senses. Or maybe, since I was
returning over the same road after an interval of only two days, I had
exhausted on the way north whatever there was of noticeable impressions
to be garnered. Or again, since I was coming from "home," from the
company of those for whom I lived and breathed, it might just be that
all my thoughts flew back with such an intensity that there was no
vitality left for the perception of the things immediately around me.

ONE. Farms and Roads

At ten minutes past four, of an evening late in September, I sat in the
buggy and swung out of the livery stable that boarded my horse. Peter,
the horse, was a chunky bay, not too large, nor too small; and I had
stumbled on to him through none of my sagacity. To tell the plain truth,
I wanted to get home, I had to have a horse that could stand the trip,
no other likely looking horse was offered, this one was--on a trial
drive he looked as if he might do, and so I bought him--no, not quite--I
arranged with the owner that I should make one complete trip with
him and pay a fee of five dollars in case I did not keep him. As the
sequence showed, I could not have found a better horse for the work in
hand.

I turned on to the road leading north, crossed the bridge, and was
bet