with jugfuls of maple syrup.
Well after midnight we returned to our domicile, and I laid me down to sleep the sleep of the righteous. At seven o'clock in the morning I bade farewell to mine host. Not a cent would he accept in payment for my night's lodgings. So, with the parting assurance that he would drop in and see me when he was next in England, we each took our several roads—he in the direction of a neighbouring works where he was employed as a mechanic, and I towards Washington, drifting meekly along the streets at certainly nothing like the speed of the night before.
The road for some distance was good, the sun came out, and the day promised to turn out fine and hot. I soon began to feel an inward content. Everything was going smoothly. I was expecting some money to be waiting for me at Washington, and then I should have nothing to worry about for a long time to come.
As it usually happens when one begins to pat oneself on the back, I immediately had a puncture. It was of course in the back wheel. Meanwhile the sun was rising higher and higher, and when, after about half an hour, I had repaired the wheel, I was feeling very thirsty. Another five miles further on I had another puncture. This time it happened to be exactly outside a garage.
I have known places in England where a certain amount of trade is always guaranteed by the ingenuity of some of the garage proprietors who regularly and systematically throw tacks and nails along the road in their vicinity. It occurred to me that this was a practice not confined to England, as examination revealed the cause of the puncture to be a nice long nail driven through from one side of the tube to the other. Not feeling of a very arduous disposition at the time, I wheeled it into the garage to be repaired.
I am afraid I was rather annoyed at the result. In the first place, I had to supply the mechanic with solution. In the second place, I had to take off the tyre for him. In the third place, I supplied a patch; and in the fourth place, I actually had to do the job for him. After settling his account, I finally explained in language as polite as I could muster that in my opinion the practice of strewing discarded nails and other implements on the highway, while not being exactly meritorious in itself, was just as commendable a method of obtaining a business connection as many that were frequently resorted to in other trades or professions of a higher standing. I explained, however, that after having been so successfully victimized by such an artifice, one would consider oneself justified in expecting a much higher standard of workmanship than was apparently forthcoming in his establishment.
Then we parted, the mechanic expressing the hope that he would never (crimson) well see me again, and that if I ever did happen to be coming back that way and got a nail in my (unspeakable) tyre that he would see me in (Arizona) before he would (smoking) well repair it for me!
CHAPTER III
PHILADELPHIA TO WASHINGTON
The scenery now began to look charming. Rolling ranges of hills extending into the distance clustered around as we drew nearer to the Chesapeake River, which flows into the well-known bay to which it gives its name.
"All aboard for Chesapeake Bay."
… I hummed the air to myself as the road abruptly ended and a suspension bridge continued the course across the broad, peaceful mouth of the river. The whole country around seemed to be permeated with a comfortable, wholesome vigour. Nothing seemed shabby, discontented, or poverty-stricken. I passed through many small towns and embryo cities. All were prosperous and all extended a hearty welcome to the traveller or visitor. Stretched across the road between two poles, just before I entered one little town, was a huge white banner bearing the words:—
"CONWAY CITY WELCOMES YOU.
WE LIKE TRAVELLERS TO VISIT US.
HAVE A GOOD LOOK AT OUR CITY."
Conway "City" did not prove to be exactly a metropolis. It was probably nothing more than a well-to-do farm town. But the houses were clean and neat, indeed some of them were very beautiful, perfectly up-to-date but never objectionably modern. The roads were a bit bumpy in places but not at all bad as American roads go. As I passed out of the town I saw another notice similar to the first:—
"THANK YOU FOR COMING.
WE HOPE YOU LIKE US.
COME AGAIN."
I got so used to being welcomed to every town I came to that I forgot I was a "stranger" in a "foreign land." There was not a town or village that did not publish its welcome in some form or other. In the main it was by advertisements. But if I stopped at a wayside store to quench my thirst (oh, the sun was hot!) I was met neither with scowls nor incivility. I am reminded of the old joke of Punch many years ago:—
"Oo's that bloke over theer, Bill?"
"Dunno; stranger, I think."
"'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im."
That is typical of what we English think of strangers. The man of better education or more refinement perhaps expresses himself differently, but he feels just the same as a rule.
At this juncture in my reveries the macadam road stopped and gave way to "natural gravel." That was quite sufficient to postpone any soliloquies I may have been indulging in until a later date. The entire sixty seconds in every minute were employed in keeping myself substantially upright. Small pot-holes gave place to larger ones, and they in turn to larger still. The loose sand, which was an inch or two deep at the start, soon assumed more considerable depths. As the detective books of our youth used to say, "The plot grew thicker and thicker." I was floundering about from right to left, prodding energetically on the ground each side with my feet to maintain some kind of balance. At times the back wheel churned up the sand aimlessly in an endeavour to get a grip on something solid. Here and there the sand and gravel were heaped into great ridges as if a mighty plough had been along that way. Getting through this stuff, thought I, was no joke. Furthermore, it was warm work; very warm work. Now and then I would find myself directed absolutely without control from one side of the road to the other, and only with the greatest strain could I keep the machine on its wheels. And with all this the "highway" still maintained its regulation width of 90 feet! The casual observer from an aeroplane above would in all probability be attracted by its straightness, its whiteness, and its apparent uniformity. "What a splendid road!" he would think.
Not so I. I was on the point of physical exhaustion with the seemingly-endless paddling and pushing and heaving (and don't forget the half-hundred-weight bag on my back!) when I was thrown on to a steeply-cambered part of the road at the side. The back wheel just slid limply sideways down the slope and left everything reposing peacefully in the natural gravel of Maryland.
When I had extricated myself from under the machine, I surveyed the position with a critical eye. What a road for a civilized country! These Yanks must be jolly-well mad to tolerate such roads as this!
Just then an old Ford came by. It was shorn entirely of mudguards, running boards, and other impedimenta. As he wallowed past me, swaying to this side and that, sometimes pointing at right angles to the way he was going and with his old engine buzzing away in bottom gear and clouds of steam issuing from his radiator (it had no cap; it must have blown off!) the driver seemed perfectly at ease. He rolled a cigar stump from one corner of his mouth to the other and gazed nonchalantly ahead. I don't think he even noticed me and my recumbent motor-cycle. I could not repress a grin as his old box of tricks disappeared slowly up the road, wagging its tail this way and that and narrowly averting
