The Land of Long Ago

Excerpt

A RIDE TO TOWN

"Make haste, child," called Aunt Jane; "there's mighty little time between dinner and sundown, and if we're goin' to town we'd better be startin'."

Aunt Jane 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 some old school history, or send your memory on a backward pilgrimage to the olden days, and a country road may carry you into a past as glorious as that which lies along the Appian Way.

For a long time we rode in silence. On crowded streets and in towns one must talk; but out of doors in the country there is a Voice continually speaking in a language as old as the song of the morning stars, and if the soul hears that, human words are not needed....