Yet these small towns and villages--ofttimes the nucleus and the birthplace of our best Americanism--and even the isolated crossroads have some rights.[11] One of the largest of these is the right of communication. Some of them, under the shrinkage of the train service of the single branch-line railroad that has served them, have found themselves in turn shrinking and hardening. The popular-priced automobile may yet prove the salvation of these towns. The tavern at the crossroads has been repainted and is serving "chicken and waffle" dinners, the general store thrives anew on its sale of gasoline and oil. But best of all, the folks in adjoining villages visit back and forth. They mix and broaden. The intercourse that they were denied by the railroad has been given them through the agency of the automobile. Come now to the public use of the automobile. And, although many railroaders profess to scout at the automobile carrying passengers for pay and state their belief that the increasing number of privately owned and operated cars represents their real problem, yet the motor bus operating 'cross country begins to bear, in its relation to the steam railroad, a strong resemblance to the effect of the jitney upon the traction road. In this last case the opposition quickly reached a high and dangerous volume and then subsided. The reasons why the jitney, after being hailed with high acclaim all the way across the land, has disappeared from the streets of more than half our American cities and towns, are not to be told here. It is sufficient here and now to say that, save in the South and the extreme West, it has ceased to be a formidable competitor of the trolley. But as the jitney of the city has diminished, its brother of the country roads has grown. And the various regulating boards, city and county, while generally looking upon the city boy with a forbidding look, have given nothing but encouraging glances to his country brother. On a certain day last summer, I rode with Henry Sewall from Frederick, Maryland, to Baltimore. Henry is a coffee-colored Negro of unusually prepossessing dress and manner. He owns a seven-passenger motor car of 1916 model and a fairly popular-priced make. He keeps his car tuned up and clean. I found the two of them in the main street of Frederick--just in front of one of the town's most popular hostelries. The car bore a placard stating that it would leave for Baltimore, forty-six miles distant, at five o'clock and that the one-way fare for the journey would be $1.50. I asked Henry Sewall the time that I might reasonably expect to be at my hotel in Baltimore. He showed his even white teeth as he replied: "'Fore seven 'clock, suh. Ah've been known to do it in less."