ator is not a trotting-sulky, and that
a row of beets is not a half-mile track. But the hard highways hurt
Bill's feet, so that Jonas nowadays takes every automobile's dust, and
none too sweetly either.

"Jonas," I said, as Bill was cooling off at the end of a row, "why
don't you get an automobile?"

"I take the eggs down to the store every two weeks and get a shave; but
I don't need a car much, havin' Bill," he replied, smashing a vicious
greenhead on Bill's withers that was keeping her mixed up with the
traces and the teeth of the harrow. "Besides, they 're skittish,
nervous things compared with a hoss. What I 'd like is something
neither one nor t'other--a sort of cross between an auto and Bill."

"Why not get a Ford car, then," I asked, "with a cultivator attachment?
It would n't step on as many hills in the row as Bill does, and I think
it would beat Bill on the road."

There was a cluck, a jump, and we were off down another row, with Jonas
saying:--

"Not yet. Bill is still fast enough for me."

And for me, too; yet there is no denying that conditions have changed,
that a multitude of new ills have been introduced into the social
organism by the automobile, and except in the deep drifts of winter,
the Ford car comes nearer curing those ills than any other anti-toxin
yet discovered.

But here are the drifts still; and here is the old question of going
back to the city to escape them. I shall sometimes wish we had gone
back as I start out on a snowy, blowy morning; but never at night as I
turn back--there is that difference between going to the city and going
home. I often think the trip in is worth while for the sake of the
trip out, such joy is it to pull in from the black, soughing woods to
the cheer of the house, stamping the powdery snow off your boots and
greatcoat to the sweet din of welcomes that drown the howling of the
wind outside.

Once last winter I had to walk from the station. The snow was deep and
falling steadily when I left the house in the morning, with increasing
wind and thickening storm all day, so that my afternoon train out was
delayed and dropped me at the station long after dark. The roads were
blocked, the snow was knee-deep, the driving wind was horizontal, and
the whirling ice particles like sharp sand, stinging, blinding as I
bent to the road.

I went forward leaning, the drag in my feet overcome by the pull of the
level wind on my slant body. Once through the long