eople are walking up
the streets of the village, the trees are tossing, the tall wheat and
corn in the fields salute me. I can smell the odour of the gathered hay,
and the faces in my dream-book smile at me.

Of all of these memories I like best the one in the pine forest.

I was at that age when children think of their parents as being
all-powerful. I could hardly have imagined any circumstances, however
adverse, that my father could not have met with his strength and wisdom
and skill. All children have such a period of hero-worship, I suppose,
when their father stands out from the rest of the world as the best and
most powerful man living. So, feeling as I did, I was made happier than
I can say when my father decided, because I was looking pale and had a
poor appetite, to take me out of school for a while, and carry me with
him on a driving trip. We lived in Michigan, where there were, in the
days of which I am writing, not many railroads; and when my father, who
was attorney for a number of wholesale mercantile firms in Detroit, used
to go about the country collecting money due, adjusting claims, and so
on, he had no choice but to drive.

And over what roads! Now it was a strip of corduroy, now a piece
of well-graded elevation with clay subsoil and gravel surface, now a
neglected stretch full of dangerous holes; and worst of all, running
through the great forests, long pieces of road from which the stumps had
been only partly extracted, and where the sunlight barely penetrated.
Here the soaked earth became little less than a quagmire.

But father was too well used to hard journeys to fear them, and I felt
that, in going with him, I was safe from all possible harm. The journey
had all the allurement of an adventure, for we would not know from day
to day where we should eat our meals or sleep at night. So, to provide
against trouble, we carried father's old red-and-blue-checked army
blankets, a bag of feed for Sheridan, the horse, plenty of bread, bacon,
jam, coffee and prepared cream; and we hung pails of pure water and
buttermilk from the rear of our buggy.

We had been out two weeks without failing once to eat at a proper
table or to sleep in a comfortable bed. Sometimes we put up at the
stark-looking hotels that loomed, raw and uninviting, in the larger
towns; sometimes we had the pleasure of being welcomed at a little inn,
where the host showed us a personal hospitality; but oftener we were
forced to make our