The Friendly Road: New Adventures in Contentment

and painfully the unhappy years I had once spent in another and greater city. Every mingled odour of the streets-and there is nothing that will so

ing my sensations and impressions, but they do not know of my memories of a former life, nor of how, many years ago, I left the city quite defeated, glad indeed that I was escaping, and thinking (as I have related elsewhere) that I should

old!" he exclaimed with a l

m counting only the

ived until I was reborn, that wonde

o irresistible about this life of the city, so utterly overpowering. I had a sense of being smaller than I had previously felt myself, that in some way my personality, all that was strong or interesting or original about me, was be

r of evening when the stores and shops are pouring forth their rivulets of humanity to join the vast flood of the streets. I stepped quickly aside into a niche near the corner of an immense building of brick and steel and glass, and the

e who did turn their eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in garments of invisibility. I could

escribe it?-and I rebound suddenly and see the world, as it were, double-see that my condition instead of being serious or tragic is in reality amusing-and I u

hold on the good hard flesh of one of my

ces-interesting, tired, passive, smilin

ems to know that David G

notion of climbing up a step near me

solid and opaque; I have plenty of red blood running in my

t all sure yet that it would not have brought me adventures and made me frie

ill into which an idle traveller had thrust his cane. Everywhere the ants were running out of their tunnels and burrows, many carrying burdens and giving one strangely the impression that while they were

isn't half as bad as yo

ich had begun to fill with soft, bluish-gray shadows, the evening lights a appeared. The air had grown cooler; in the dista

stify that I was now a visible person a sharp-eyed newsboy discovered me-the first h

ld, b

rewd, world-wise, humorous

acquaintance; but he evidently measured my purchasing capacity quite ac

id Grayson," I said to myself, "

fingers glanced at me in passing and the

match

him a

" and he passed o

'boss' around

e street, looking in at the gay windows, now ablaze with lights, and watching the really wonderful procession of vehicles of all shapes and sizes

ve ever known, like these experiences of the streets, have resulted from coming up to

e down to life from above. Instead of being content to carry through life a sufficiently wonderful being named David Grayson I tried desperately to set up and support a sort of dummy creat

ed, reading "Huckleberry Finn," while

is empty coat served well for a scarecrow. A wisp o

, and have been out freely upo

who are poor it does not on the other hand rob you of any true friendship among those who are rich or mighty. I say true friendship, for un

philosophized upon the ways and means of life-not without design, for I could have had no such experiences

or so and does not know when or where he is again to break his fast. Try it, friend and see! It was already getting along in t

A score of fascinating plans for getting my sup

places in Kilburn, and good ones, too, where I could barter a chapter of Montaigne and a little good

ttle motto I ofte

IFE, BEGI

eing boarded by a somewhat shabby looking farmer who would have offered them, let us say, a notable musical pr

d sizzling before him ready to be carved-a fine pompous citizen who never realized how nearly Fate with a battered volume of Montaigne in one hand and a tin whistle in the other-came t

y," I said; "I mus

ding a number of lounging men with two or three cabs or carriages st

d they seem to like me and understand me. So I walked up to the group of jolly drivers and stablemen intending to ask my directions. The talking died out and they

I said, "I

was just a little taken aback, but I laughed, too, knowing th

s is the first time in some dozen years

said one of them, evidently the wit

oks to me. Why, I feel as though I had been away sleeping for twenty years, like Rip Van Winkle. When I left the city there was scarcely an automobile

at the invasion of the automobile was a matter of tre

thers. For I have found the things that chiefly interest people are the things they already know about-p

g about my farm, how much I enjoyed it, and what a wonderful free life one had in the country. In this I was really taking an unfair advantage of them, for I was trading on the fact that every man, down deep in his heart, has more or less of an insti

e size of Hubbard squashes, but they are good, sizable apples, and as for flavour-all the spices of Arcady-! And I believe, I KNOW, from my own experience that these fields and hills are capable of healing men's souls. And when I se

fact,

that looked like small-sized hams, and a rich, warm Irish voice. At first he was inclined to use me as the ready butt of his lively mind, but prese

nner of baked beans"-and I smacked-"and home made bread" and I smacked again-"

I suddenly recalled my own tragic state. So I jumped up quickly and asked directions for getting down to the

vour of you. I'm looking for a friend, and I

tily. "Put it there in the office-on

nd was about to say good-by

a drink before you go"-and h

fine a bit of hospitality as he could offer me, "thank

ng my arm. "Sure you'll be better

sure as can be that they would have found supper

d after me, "we're glad t

nces, and then came to a street near the river which was garishly lighted, and crowded with small, poor shops and stores, with a saloon on n

as about to make some further inquiries for the headquarters of the mill men or for Bill Hahn personally, when I saw, not far ahead of me, a black crowd of people reaching out into the street. Drawing nearer I saw that an open space or block between two rows of houses was

as and thoughts and feelings of his own. It seemed rather-how shall I describe it?-as though the speaker was looking into the very hearts of that vast gathering of poor men and poor women and merely telling them what they themselves felt, but could not tell. And

e edge of the platform, and his undistinguished face glowed with the whi

h is not so bounteous a commodity in this world that we can afford to treat even its unfamiliar manifestations w

rkings of Socialism; and the main contention of its philos

is perfectly balanced rarely soil themselves with the dust of battle. The heat necessary to produce social conflict (and social progress-who kn

a powerful method of stimulating human progress. The world has been lagging behind in its sense of brotherhood, and we now have the Socialis

not all

pon us a renewed and more wonderful sense of the worth of the individual human soul. A new individualism, bringing with it, perhaps, some faint realization of our dre

ard, dry twist to my throat. But after a time my friend Bill Hahn, evidently quite worn out, yielded his place to another

aving the platform. I stepped up to him, but it was not until I calle

he said; "you

to several of his companions as "Brother G

denying. Feeling our way along the wall, we came to the top and went into a long, low, rather dimly lighted room set about with tables and chairs-a sort of restaurant. A number of men and a few women had already gathered there. Among them my eyes instantly singled out a huge, rough-looking man who stood at the centre of an animated group. He had thick, shaggy hair, and one side of his face over the cheekbone was of a dull blue-black and raked and scarred, where it had

ent were women, some of them plainly from the mills and some of them curiously different-women from other walks in life who had thrown themselves heart and soul into the strike. Without ceremony but with much lau

no stiff collar, only a soft woollen shirt without a necktie. He had the long sensitive, beautiful hands of an artist, but his face was thin and marked with the pallor peculiar to the indoor worker. I soon learned that he was a weaver in the mills, an Englishman by birth, and we had not talked two minutes before I found that, while he had

lated rapidly around the table, and almost immediately the room began to fill with tobacco smoke. Every one seemed to be talking and laughing at once, in the liveliest spirit

le have a whole life, a wh

ce of a girl rang out with the first lines

risoners of

wretched o

thunders c

world's

died down the whole company, as though by a common impulse, a

e final

stand in

therhoo

the hum

ble fervour of faith. Some of the things I had thought and dreamed about secretly among the hills of my farm all these years, dreamed about as being something far off and as unrealizable

flow of jolly conversation When I heard a rapping on one of

chance of putting us in the wrong. Above all we must comport ourselves here and

dead silence-an explosive silence. Every person there seemed to be petrified in the position in which his attention was attracted. Eve

sas

, as in the city itself, was at the tensest, had not the leader suddenly br

trivial incidents, or personal bitterness, or small persecutions, to turn us from the great work we have in hand. However our

shouted a voice

and every one turned away from the policeman at the door.

midnight the party began to break up. I l

me a place to

can," he sa

ong, dark stairway and out into the almost deserted street. Looking up between the buildings I could see the clear blu

o the darkness. And it seemed as though, as I lay there, listening, that I could hear the city