Few joys may compare with the joy of such a sudden, unexpected reunion. It is like “the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.” No, this simile is too disloyal to my friend. Well, then, it is like a beaker full of the warm South when you are leaving a good beer country and are trying to reconcile yourself to ditch-water for the next few weeks. At any rate, similes or not, there were we two together again at last. What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and blood-red maple banners to the purple mountains of the Aroostook. And how we did take stock of the immediate past, chuckling to find that it had not been a quarter so bad as I had stupidly supposed. What gilded forest trails were those which we blazed into the glamourous land of to-morrow! And every other moment these recreative labors would be interrupted while I pressed between the pages of a note-book some butterfly or sunset leaf or quadruply fortunate clover which my Auto-comrade found and turned over to me. Between two of those pages, by the way, I afterward found the argument of this paper. Then, when the first effervescence of our meeting had lost a little of its first, fine, carbonated sting, what Elysian hours we spent over the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller! Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over. These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, out-Fletcher Fletcher chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy. And we would underline and bracket and side-line and overline the ragged little paper volume, and scribble up and down its margins, and dream over its foot-notes, to our hearts’ content. Such experiences, though, are all too rare with me. Why? Because my Auto-comrade is a rather particular person and will not associate with me unless I toe his mark. “Come,” I propose to him, “let us go on a journey.” “Hold hard,” says he, and looks me over appraisingly. “You know the rule of the Auto-comrades’ Union. We are supposed to associate with none but fairly able persons. Are you a fairly able person?” If it turns out that I am not, he goes on a rampage, and begins to talk like an athletic trainer. The first thing he demands is that his would-be associate shall keep on hand a jolly good store of surplus vitality. You are expected to supply him exuberance somewhat as you supply gasolene to your motor.