In its connection with the traffic, and whole friendly intercourse
with the country, there is something very pleasant in that succession
of saunterers and brisk and business-like passers-by, that peoples
our ways and helps to build up what Walt Whitman calls 'the cheerful
voice of the public road, the gay, fresh sentiment of the road.' But
out of the great network of ways that binds all life together from
the hill-farm to the city, there is something individual to most,
and, on the whole, nearly as much choice on the score of company as
on the score of beauty or easy travel. On some we are never long
without the sound of wheels, and folk pass us by so thickly that we
lose the sense of their number. But on others, about little-
frequented districts, a meeting is an affair of moment; we have the
sight far off of some one coming towards us, the growing definiteness
of the person, and then the brief passage and salutation, and the
road left empty in front of us for perhaps a great while to come.
Such encounters have a wistful interest that can hardly be understood
by the dweller in places more populous.
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