"A stage journey from one part of the country to another was as comfortless as could well be imagined. The coach was without springs, and the seats were hard and often backless. The horses were jaded and worn, and the roads were rough with boulders and stumps of trees, or furrowed with ruts and quagmires. The journey was usually begun at 3 o'clock in the morning, and after eighteen hours of jogging over the rough roads the weary traveler was put down at a country inn whose bed and board were such as few horny-handed laborers of to-day would endure. Long before daybreak the next morning a blast from the driver's horn summoned him to the renewal of his journey. If the coach stuck fast in a mire, as it often did, the passengers must alight and help lift it out." No wonder a man made his will and had prayers offered in church for his safe return before he ventured forth. But even such a conveyance was a luxury. As a rule people traveled on foot, carrying their packs on their backs. The well-to-do rode on horseback, and in some places post chaises with relays of horses every ten or twenty miles could be obtained. What would the ghosts of such travelers say to-day, should they stumble on a Pullman car or a dust-compelling devil wagon? Our very expressions of speech are modeled on the common, every-day things of life. Fifty or a hundred years ago the man who was a "slow coach" to-day would be "geared low." [Sidenote: _COL. JOHN ODELL._] At least two of the many interesting buildings hereabouts are worth noting. Standing back from the road a quarter of a mile or so, and within the compass of the Ardsley Club grounds, is a plain little cottage whose clapboards show no mark of the planing mill. Here once lived the redoubtable Col. John Odell, whose father, Jonathan, languished in a British prison in New York because his son was fighting under the flag of freedom. At the time of his capture Jonathan Odell was living on the Odell Estate, which was later sold to a son of Alexander Hamilton. It is told that the Hessians hanged a negro slave of Odell's three separate times in an effort to make him disclose the hiding place of certain hogs with which the said Hessians were anxious to fraternise. [Sidenote: _CYRUS W. FIELD._] A step further on stands the former residence of Cyrus W. Field, whose place, known as Ardsley, at one time covered some five hundred or more acres extending from the Post Road over the ridge to the Sawmill River. The house was built in the day of the mansard roof, and is not a particularly picturesque creation, but every American is interested in the man who succeeded in linking his country with the outside world as did Cyrus W. Field. [Sidenote: _SUNNYSIDE._]