hooner wagon sails by.
These wagons give one the queer feeling of being set back to pioneer
days,--do you remember the Pike's Peak picture at the Capitol with all
the eager faces turned toward the setting sun?

Now and then I run across a hunting party from one of the big hotels
which are getting to be plentiful in this healthy region, but these
people with their sporting clothes and their sophistication always seem
out of place among the pines.

And now, since you have written to me of life as a journey on the
highroad, I will tell you of my first adventure.

There's a schooner-man who comes from the sandhills on his way to the
nearest resort with his chickens and eggs. It is a three days'
journey, and he camps out at night, sleeping in his wagon, building his
fire in the open.

One day he passed me as I sat tired by the wayside, and offered to give
me a lift toward home. I accepted, and rode beside him. And thus
began an acquaintance which interests me, and evidently pleases him.

He is tall and loosely put together, this knight of the Sandy Road, but
with the ease of manner which seems to belong to his kind. There's
good blood in these sand-hill people, and it shows in a lack of
self-consciousness which makes one feel that they would meet a prince
or an emperor without embarrassment. Yet there's nothing of
forwardness, nothing of impertinence. It is a drawing-room manner,
preserved in spite of generations of illiteracy and degeneration.

He is not an unpicturesque object. Given a plumed hat, a doublet and
hose, and he would look the part, and his manner would fit in with it.
Given good English, his voice would never betray him for what he is.
For another thing that these people have preserved is a softness of
voice and an inflection which is Elizabethan rather than twentieth
century American.

Having grown to know him fairly well, I fished for an invitation to
visit his home. I wanted to see where this gentlemanly backwoodsman
spent the days which were not lived on the road.

I carried a rug with me, and slept for the first night under the open
sky. Have you ever seen a southern sky when it was studded with stars?
If not, there's something yet before you. There's no whiteness or
coldness about these stars, they are pure gold, and warm with light.

My schooner-man slept in his wagon, covered with an old quilt. His
mules were picketed close by, the dog curled himself beside his master,
each gettin