The Lightning Conductor Discovers AmericaWilliamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
General
The Lightning Conductor Discovers America
Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris)
Automobiles -- Fiction
I had never been by road from Boston to Plymouth, and as I'd not
expected to drive, I hadn't looked up the route. Caspian probably had,
but I didn't want help from him, and I determined to die rather than
look at a map. You, a Harvard man, no doubt know the way well, though a
motor car was a rare if not unknown species of animal when you were an
undergrad.
In the beginning it was easy enough. We simply went out of Boston along
the road by which we'd come in: past the Arnold Arboretum of which you
Harvard fellows are so proud; Forest Hill, parklike Morton Street, and
across the Neponset River, where my dear little seat-mate (who couldn't
have guessed how I felt to be by her side again) was enraptured with the
view of Boston Harbour. She was gayer than I had seen her since that
moonlight night when I came to myself--too late, as it turned out; yet I
don't feel somehow that it's _irrevocably_ too late. I can't! It was
good to hear her laugh again. "Do look," she said, "at the funny little
porches on the funny little houses! They put hammocks on ones that are
so narrow people have to fall off the porch when they want to get out!
Yet see how happy the women look! They must have husbands they love."
Caspian heard, and leaned forward to suppress her. "Patricia, I wouldn't
talk so much to the chauffeur if I were you, while he's driving. He
doesn't know the way, and he'd better give his attention to the
sign-posts."
Of course I could say nothing. But I reminded myself that snubs
generally come home to roost. I hoped he'd "get _his_," as you say, and
I hadn't long to wait before poetical justice fell. The man kept up a
running fire of information, which he had doubtless culled from a
guide-book to impress his fiancee, having no personal interest in
history except that it has led up to him. The landscape left him cold;
the seas of wild blue chicory and forget-me-not didn't suggest to him
the colour of a certain girl's eyes as it did to another chap who had no
right to make the comparison. He didn't care for the "Golden Wedding
House," or any of the other pretty old houses so beautifully fitted to
the pretty old ladies rocking on their "piazzas" under the shade of
giant trees. The facts with which he had primed himself, like pocketsful
of dry cracknels, were such as "Here" (at East Milton) "was built the
first railway in the country. It was horse drawn, and over it was
carried" (I think he used the word "transported," which proved the
guide-book) "stone from the quarries of Quincy to construct the Bunker
Hill Monument." "Here" (at Quincy) "in the middle of the city stands the
Stone Temple where are buried the two Presidents, John Adams and John
Quincy Adams."
It was then that the snub flew home, with a strong impetus from the
exasperated Pat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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