56 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



right side. This explanation is scarcely explanatory. Were highway- 

 men not as common in other countries as in Italy and England? 

 Could they not and would they not as footmen attack from the left 

 side of the road as well as from the right? Usage so widespread 

 must have a far more generally acting and ancient habit behind it than 

 this of robbery. All such habits as the rule of the road must have 

 sprung from many and more primitive and humble origins, from the 

 necessities or customs of the common people, in fact, whence as here 

 the few later diligences and post-coaches derived their habits. The 

 conscious legal enactment is merely the late acceptance of centuries of 

 unconscious custom. If suddenly springing into existence, a general 

 change must be the response to a new circumstance of powerful and 

 general application. 



Contributing customs or necessities may have cooperated to effect 

 the change in Italy and England from the natural passage of vehicles 

 to the right, making them pass to the left, while foot-passengers, ves- 

 sels, etc., continued to pass to the right. But it has been overlooked 

 that before vehicles had come into use horseback-riding must have set 

 the fashion in passing because the riding of horses, asses, mules, etc., 

 must have long preceded the existence of the wheeled vehicle of any 

 kind. For perhaps a thousand years (as now in a large part of the 

 earth's surface) it must have been impossible for transportation of 

 goods or men to be effected by wagons, and only by horses, pack-mules, 

 etc. During this time the rule of the road must have been fixed pretty 

 rigidly, especially as the narrow " trail " or path would not every- 

 where allow meeting riders to pass, but only in certain wider or more 

 open spaces. In all civilized countries, except the two mentioned, the 

 fact that subsequent customs demand the passage to the right shows 

 that, during the preceding centuries, the ridden horses and pack- 

 animals must have passed to the right. One can scarcely doubt that 

 the ridden horses of England and Italy did the same. This seems 

 only to deepen the mystery of their contrary practise to-day. 



The mystery, I suspect, is resolved by the forgotten fact of the tre- 

 mendous, fashion-setting, and centuries-long influence of chivalry with 

 its tourneys, joustings, and knightly battles on horseback, with ax, 

 sword, spear, tilting lance or pole. Those who have studied and real- 

 ize the vast domination of chivalry can easily comprehend the role it 

 played as its vogue after centuries melted into plebeian tilling the soil, 

 commercialism, and roads covered with wagons, coaches, etc. The 

 horseback fights and mock-battles of the troubadours, minnie signers, 

 knights, and aristocrats of these centuries were possible only by the 

 contestants meeting and passing to the left. It is needless to illustrate 

 the fact from histories of chivalry, from medieval legends, tales, ad- 

 ventures, etc., whether of the Arthurian cycle, or Ariosto, or a hundred 



