I have not spoken of our lunches, a most important item by one o’clock. We had brought a small English hamper, fitted with the usual porcelain dishes, cutlery, tin boxes, etc., for four people, and unless we were positive that a good place to eat was midway on the road, we prepared a lunch, or had the hotel put one up for us. This latter plan proved both expensive and unsatisfactory. Usually Toodles was sent foraging to the delicatessen shops for fresh rolls, cold meats and sandwiches, eggs, fruit, tomatoes, and bakery dainties, and the hotel filled our thermos-bottles with hot coffee. We carried salt and pepper, mustard, sweet and sour pickles, or a relish, orange marmalade, or a fruit jam, in the hamper, and beyond that we took no staple supplies on the whole trip. We met so many people who carried with them a whole grocery-store, even to sacks of flour, that you would imagine there was not a place to get food from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Often later on we would meet these same people and find that they had thrown or given away most of their larder. Of course, the camping parties, which are legion, are houses on wheels! Aside from the tents, poles, bedding, and cooking utensils, we have seen stoves, sewing-machines, crates of tinned foods, trunks full of every conceivable incumbrance they could buy, strapped to the back and sides and even on the top of the car, and usually the personal luggage jammed in between the mud-guards and hood of the engine. A traveling circus is an orderly, compact miniature in comparison. And the people!--sitting on top of a mountain of baggage, or under it, the picture of woe and discomfort. That may be fun, but I fear I have not developed a capacity for such pleasure. Have you ever seen a party of this description unpack and strike camp after a hot, broiling, dusty day of hard travel? You will do as we did--drive right ahead until you come to a clean hotel and a bath. We have been told so often that one has to develop an “open-air” spirit to really enjoy a long motor trip! Quite true! I can’t imagine what the fun can be of touring in a closed limousine, and yet we have met _that_ particularly exclusive party more than once. On the whole, an absence of flies, ants, mosquitoes, and sand and dust in one’s bed and food does not detract from the pleasure of the trip. It may be all right to endure such annoyances for a few days in the woods, to fish or hunt--but weeks and more weeks of it! We admit our “lack,” whatever it may be termed, and enjoy clean linen, hot tubs, and tables that have legs not belonging to ants and spiders.