So far as this book is
concerned, annual driving trips through Central Vermont are
responsible. They were great events, planned months in advance. With a
three-seated carriage and a stocky span good for thirty miles a day
and only spirited if they met one of those new contraptions aglitter
with polished brass gadgets, that fed on gasoline instead of honest
cracked corn and oats, we took to the road. A newspaper man,
vacation-free from Broadway first nights and operas sung by Melba,
Sembrich, and the Brothers de Reszke, was showing his city-bred
children his native hills and introducing them to the beauties of a
world alien to asphalt pavements and brownstone fronts.

It was leisurely travel. When the road was unusually steep, to spare
the horses, we walked. If Mother's eagle eye spotted a four-leaf
clover, we stopped and picked it. If a bend in the road brought a
pleasing prospect into view, the horses could be certain of ten
minutes for cropping roadside grass. Most of all, no farmhouse
nestling beneath wide-spread maples or elms went without careful
consideration of Father's constant daydream, a home in the country.

These driving trips often included overnight stops with relatives
living in villages undisturbed by the screech and thunder of freight
and way trains, or with others living on picturesque old farms.
Afterward there was always lively conversation concerning the
possibilities of Cousin This or That's home as a country place. This
reached fever heat after visits to Great Aunt Laura who lived in a
roomy old house painted white with green blinds in a town bordering on
Lake Champlain. A pair of horse-chestnut trees flanked the walk to the
front door,--a portal unopened save for weddings, funerals, and the
minister's yearly call.

From here could be seen the sweep of the main range of the Green
Mountains. The kitchen doorway afforded a view of Mount Marcy and the
Adirondacks never to be forgotten. It was the ancestral home with all
the proper attributes, horse barn, woodshed, tool houses, and a large
hay barn. Father's dream for forty years was to recapture it and
settle down to the cultivation of rustic essays instead of its
unyielding clay soil. However, he was first and last a newspaper man
and his practical side told him that Shoreham was too far from
Broadway. So it remained a dream.

His city-born and bred son inherited the insidious idea. Four years in
a country college augmented it and, as time went