YOUNG people believe very little that they hear about the compen-sations of growing old, and of living over again in memory the events of the past. Yet there really are these com-pensations and pleasures, and although they are not so vivid and breathless as the pleasures of youth, they have some-thing delicate and fine about them that must be experienced to be appreciated.
Few of us would exchange our mem-ories for those of others. They have become a part of our personality, and we could not part with them without losing something of ourselves. Neither would we part with our own particular childhood, which, however difficult it may have been at times, seems to each of us more significant than the child-hood of any one else. I can run over in my mind certain incidents of my childhood as if they were chapters in a much-loved book, and when I am wake-ful at night, or bored by a long journey, or waiting for some one in the railway-station, I take them out and go over them again.
Nor is my book of memories without its illustrations. I can see little vil-lages, and a great city, and forests and planted fields, and familiar faces; and all have this advantage: they are not fixed and without motion, like the pic-tures in the ordinary book. People are walking up the streets of the vil-lage, the trees are tossing, the tall wheat and corn in the fields salute me.
I can smell the odour of the gathered hay, and the faces in my dream-book smile at me.
Of all of these memories I like best the one in the pine forest.
I was at that age when children think of their parents as being all-powerful.
I could hardly have imagined any cir-cumstances, however adverse, that my father could not have met with his strength and wisdom and skill. All chil-dren have such a period of hero-wor-ship, I suppose, when their father stands out from the rest of the world as the best and most powerful man living. So, feeling as I did, I was made happier than I can say when my father decided, because I was looking pale and had a poor appetite, to take me out of school for a while, and carry me with him on a driving trip. We lived in Michigan, where there were, in the days of which I am writing, not many rail-roads; and when my father, who was attorney for a number of wholesale mer-cantile firms in Detroit, used to go about the country collecting money due, adjusting claims, and so on, he had no choice but to drive.
And over what roads! Now it was a strip of corduroy, now a piece of well-graded elevation with clay subsoil and gravel surface, now a neglected stretch full of dangerous holes; and worst of all, running through the great forests, long pieces of road from which the stumps had been only partly extracted, and where the sunlight barely pene-trated. Here the soaked earth became little less than a quagmire.
But father was too well used to hard journeys to fear them, and I felt that, in going with him, I was safe from all possible harm. The journey had all the allurement of an adventure, for we would not know from day to day where we should eat our meals or sleep at night. So, to provide against trouble, we carried father's old red-and-blue-checked army blankets, a bag of feed for Sheridan, the horse, plenty of bread, bacon, jam, coffee and prepared cream; and we hung pails of pure water and buttermilk from the rear of our buggy.
We had been out two weeks without failing once to eat at a proper table or to sleep in a comfortable bed. Some-times we put up at the stark-looking ho-tels that loomed, raw and uninviting, in the larger towns; sometimes we had the pleasure of being welcomed at a little inn, where the host showed us a personal hospitality; but oftener we were forced to make ourselves "paying guests" at some house. We cared noth-ing whether we slept in the spare rooms of a fine frame "residence" or crept into bed beneath the eaves of the attic in a log cabin. I had begun to feel that our journey would be almost too tame and comfortable, when one night some-thing really happened.
Father lost his bearings. He was hoping to reach the town of Gratiot by nightfall, and he attempted to make a short cut. To do this he turned into a road that wound through a magnifi-cent forest, at first of oak and butter-nut, ironwood and beech, then of densely growing pines. When we en-tered the wood it was twilight, but no sooner were we well within the shadow of these sombre trees than we were plunged in darkness, and within half an hour this darkness deepened, so that we could see nothing -- not even the horse.
"The sun doesn't get in here the year round," said father, trying his best to guide the horse through the mire. So deep was the mud that it seemed as if it literally sucked at the legs of the horse and the wheels of the buggy, and I began to wonder if we should really be swallowed, and to fear that we had met with a difficulty that even my father could not overcome. I can hardly make plain what a tragic thought that was! The horse began to give out sighs and groans, and in the intervals of his struggles to get on, I could feel him trembling. There was a note of anxiety in father's voice as he called out, with all the authority and cheer he could command, to poor Sheri-dan. The wind was rising, and the long sobs of the pines made cold shivers run up my spine. My teeth chattered, partly from cold, but more from fright.
"What are we going to do?" I asked, my voice quivering with tears.
"Well, we aren't going to cry, what-ever else we do!" answered father, rather sharply. He snatched the lighted lantern from its place on the dashboard and leaped out into the road.
