To Him The Small Boy
Opens His Heart; The "Hobo" Passes The Time Of Day With A Merry Jest
Thrown
In; the good housewife brings a glass of cold water or milk,
adding womanlike, a little motherly advice; the passing
Teamster, or
even stage-driver - that autocrat of the "ribbons" - shouts a cheery
"How many miles today, Captain?" or, "Where did yon start from this
morning, Colonel?" - these titles perhaps due to the battered old coat
of khaki.
All the humors of the road are yours. In fact, you yourself contribute
to them, by your unexpected appearance on the scene and the novelty of
your "make-up," if I may be pardoned the expression. At the hotel bar,
you drink a glass of beer with the local celebrity and thus come into
immediate touch with, the oldest inhabitant." After dinner, seated on a
bench on the sidewalk, you smoke a pipe and discuss the affairs of the
nation or of the town - usually the latter - with the man who in the
morning offered to give you a lift and never will understand why you
declined. Invariably you receive courteous replies and in kindly
interest are met more than half way.
The early romances, the prototypes of the modern novel, from "Don
Quixote" to "Tom Jones" and "Joseph Andrews," were little more than
narratives of adventures on the road. "Joseph Andrews" in particular -
perhaps Fielding's masterpiece - is simply the story of a journey from
London to a place in the country some hundred and fifty miles distant.
In these books all the adventures are associated with inns and the
various characters, thrown together by chance, there assembled.
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