the end of the road the thing to be desired.

But

well along in the third day she began to think there was no end to that road for her, and that if anything was to be gotten out of it, she must take her pleasure and her pay as she went along. Then the wayside shade and the long grass in the fence corner began to tempt her and to give her much pleasure.

The chief difference between Jess and her human kin in this respect, I fancy, lay in the fact that she learned her lesson in much less time than we do. How many of us go steaming on, champing our bits, pressing, fretting to get there, through forty, fifty, sixty years of life's road, tufted with clover, carpeted with sweet grass, shaded ever and anon with noble trees, marked with frequent surprises and tempting restingspots, all of which we do not see and will not enjoy because of the prolonged fever for the end. When Jess had learned this lesson, the march itself became delightful, and we went on and on and on, day after day, counting valley after valley, climbing hill after hill, with no more haste, but a growing sense that here was as good as there, and that there were delights everywhere. We grew companionable, we trusted each other,

we rested each other. One walked and then both walked, until we had gone over some five hundred miles of the world together.

Mount Horeb, Mount Ida, Mount Hope, Blue Mounds, Pine Bluff, Highlands, Castle Rock, Wauwatosa, Prairie du Chien, and Port Andrew are places all unfamiliar to the tourist. They are not down in the list of summer resorts, but taken in the leisure of the country road they all have charms, histories, traditions, and romances to delight the eye and feed the mind. There were the alternations of hill and dale, rugged rocks rimming around glorious clover fields, knee-deep in which stood happy cattle high in pedigree, five hundred miles of flower-bordered road lined with blackberries, raspberries, and plums to tempt delay.

But

more than this, we travelled over five hundred miles of unwritten heroism and unrecorded bravery. Every crumbling log house had a story of frontier hardship, perchance of pilgrim loyalty and pioneer prophecy to tell the leisurely horseClimb over into the neglected buryinggrounds along the way, and amid the unkempt grasses you may read names that reach back to Scandinavian fiords, Irish cabins, Scotch heather

man.

hills or German vineyards, names that are wine to the imagination, stirring it into fancies and

into tears.

Five hundred miles on horseback in Wisconsin reveals great stretches of human nature still alive and throbbing with creative forces, as well as sacred memory fields. Jess, like her rider, soon learned to have an interest in the life along the road. She loved to stop to inquire the way, and was loath to pass a team without exchanging a word. She was interested with me in the simple procession of human nature that passed in review as we travelled, harvest hands, haymakers, berry-pickers, women in the garden, boys hunting cows, or Shakespeare's whining schoolboy,

"creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school."

One day we joined a funeral procession, the next we waited to see a circus pass. A campmeeting, the Salvation Army, Professor Buckley with his educated horses and trained dogs, all fell in our way and enriched our lives. One hot afternoon we were just in time to take in the closing exercises of a sleepy little district school of twelve children, nine of them barefooted, and

the little "school ma'am" gave them each a card, such as I used to receive. She tried to make a little farewell speech, but embarrassment and tears choked her, and we helped her out. We found human nature so in love with flowers that it embowered the roughest cabin in morning-glories. We also found human nature, alas! so unsavory, barren, dirty, that it turned us away from the big house without courage to ask for the dinner we needed. We found human nature grim and selfish, tender and generous. We encountered the blight of plenty, the complacency of independent ease, and just over the way we found the generosity of pinched lives, the beneficent pity of the poor for the poor.

One night the road grew long and we fain would shorten the projected route by asking shelter along the way. The farms were ample and the farm-houses modern and roomy, but their owners one after another refused to take us in. They were not "fixed to keep travellers," they said. The fifth time the plea for the tired horse fell on unresponsive ears and the refusal was shaking our faith in human nature, when the young farmer said, "I'll tell you where you can

stop, a half mile ahead, at my mother's." And,

sure enough, we found there the promised welcome. While enjoying the bread and milk in the cozy home of the Irish widow, I asked, "How long have you lived here?" "Forty years, sir. I have raised nine boys, and buried my husband twenty years ago." The boy that directed me was a graduate of the State University. They taught him trigonometry at college, but they neglected to put in a course on hospitality. Perhaps it is expecting too much of a university to teach such high virtues to men who live in big houses and have married women who have been "off to school" and can play on the piano and read French; but the open door, spiritual and mental as well as material, of the widow's home suggests communications with heaven, and the teaching of it is worthy of a professor's chair in our colleges.

Another night found us entering a nook of bewitching loveliness at the base of a great castellated rock standing like a Titanic throne in the centre of circling strata and splendid hills, with a dashing, chattering brook of spring-water at its foot. Both horse and rider espied with joy the pretty house on the knoll and the ample barn fragrant with new-mown hay. The motherly