The great work of building and keeping in repair the Cumberland Road, and of operating it, developed a race of men as unknown before its era as afterward. For the real life of the road, however, one will look to the days of its prime--to those who passed over its stately stretches and dusty coils as stage- and mail-coach drivers, express carriers and "wagoners," and the tens of thousands of passengers and immigrants who composed the public which patronized the great highway. This was the real life of the road--coaches numbering as many as twenty traveling in a single line; wagonhouse yards where a hundred tired horses rested over night beside their great loads; hotels where seventy transient guests have been served breakfast in a single morning; a life made cheery by the echoing horns of hurrying stages; blinded by the dust of droves of cattle numbering into the thousands; a life noisy with the satisfactory creak and crunch of the wheels of great wagons carrying six and eight thousand pounds of freight east or west. The revolution of society since those days could not have been more surprising. The change has been so great it is a wonder that men deign to count their gain by the same numerical system. As Macaulay has said, we do not travel today, we merely "arrive." You are hardly a traveler now unless you cross a continent. Travel was once an education. This is growing less and less true with the passing years. Fancy a journey from St. Louis to New York in the old coaching days, over the Cumberland and the old York Roads. How many persons the traveler met! How many interesting and instructive conversations were held with fellow travelers through the long hours; what customs, characters, foibles, amusing incidents would be noticed and remembered, ever afterward furnishing the information necessary to help one talk well and the sympathy necessary to render one capable of listening to others. The traveler often sat at table with statesmen whom the nation honored, as well as with stagecoach-drivers whom a nation knew for their skill and prowess with six galloping horses. Henry Clays and "Red" Buntings dined together, and each made the other wiser, if not better. The greater the gulf grows between the rich and poor, the more ignorant do both become, particularly the rich. There was undoubtedly a monotony in stagecoach journeying, but the continual views of the landscape, the ever-fresh air, the constantly passing throngs of various description, made such traveling an experience unknown to us "arrivers" of today. How fast it has been forgotten that travel means seeing people rather than things. The age of sight-seeing has superseded that of traveling. How few of us can say with the New Hampshire sage: "We have traveled a great deal 'in Concord.'" Splendidly are the old coaching days described by Thackeray, who caught their spirit: