ne came out of the house, drawing on a pair of silk gloves. She
was arrayed in her best gown of black alpaca, a silk-fringed cape
covered her shoulders, her poke bonnet was draped with a veil of
figured lace, and under the lace her face shone with happy
anticipation, for a lifetime of trips to town had not dulled her
enjoyment of such an event.

The horse and buggy stood at the gate. The former had a pedigree as
long as that of the penniless lass, and Aunt Jane could tell many
wonderful tales of Nelly's spirit and speed in the days of her youth.
Some remnant of this fire was supposed to smolder yet in the old
thoroughbred, but as I looked at the drooping head and half-shut eyes,
I saw there was good reason for Aunt Jane's haste, if we were expected
to get back from town before nightfall.

"What are we going to town for?" I asked, as I stepped into the buggy
and took up the reins.

Aunt Jane hesitated. "Well," she said, "I'm goin' to lay in a supply
o' soda and cream o' tartar, and I may buy some gyarden seed and one
thing or another. I ain't exactly out o' soda and cream o' tartar, and
I could git the seed from some o' the neighbors. I reckon if the truth
was told, I'm goin' to town jest to be a-goin'."

A certain English humorist, who is not so well known to this
generation as Mark Twain, once wrote a page of gentle satire about
those misguided people who leave their native land to travel in
foreign countries. He finds but three reasons for their folly:
"infirmity of body, imbecility of mind, and inevitable necessity"; and
the whole circle of such travelers he classifies under the following
heads: the Idle, the Inquisitive, the Lying, the Proud, the Vain, and
the Splenetic. Had he gone a little farther into his subject, he might
have written approvingly of the Innocent Traveler, who, on a May day,
sets forth to go from his home in the country to the near-by town, all
for the mere pleasure of traveling.

Why, indeed, should the desire for travel send one across oceans or
over continents? Wherever we go we find only the old earth and the old
sky, and, under varying forms of dress and complexion, the same old
humanity of which we are a part. Does not the sun rise or set as
splendidly over some blue Kentucky hill as over the Jungfrau? Is the
daisy on Mars Hill any fairer than the daisy that opens its petals on
any meadow of the New World? And if historic associations are the aim
of your wanderings, turn the pages of