ROADSIDE IMPROVEMENT 139 



advice of those who by long study and varied experience can direct 

 with a sure eye and a competent hand. 



Our state, as you know, is a land in large part of flat level 

 prairies and our roads, often for mile after long mile, run straight- 

 away without turn or curve and without appreciable rise or fall. 

 Our present accepted hard road construction is an eighteen-foot streak 

 of gray or almost white concrete, stretching away miles beyond all 

 possible range of vision; mathematically exact at its edges, never 

 widening, never narrowing; and then the fences equidistant on each 

 side, wire and posts, wire and posts, and more wire, and more posts, 

 posts without end ; and we begin to understand what Kipling's soldier 

 felt with his 



Boots, Boots, Boots, Boots, 

 Slog, slog, slogging up and down 



and we try to make a little rhyme to match it beginning 

 Posts, Posts, Posts, Posts, 



and we can't do it because rhyming is neither our trade nor our 

 profession. And there is your Illinois road for many miles, in many 

 parts of the state, and there is your problem, to take the curse off of it. 

 It is a most difficult one to solve; but we can be thankful that few, 

 in fact none, of the others are so difficult. It can be solved; all 

 problems can be solved, except, possibly what to do with our telephone 

 poles. 



The person who has given little study to the question will be 

 quite apt to say, with conviction: "The whole problem is a simple 

 one. Plant trees. Plant them on both sides of the road. Plant them 

 by the thousand. You can't have too many trees. What is more 

 beautiful than a fully developed maple or a perfect, mature elm? 

 What greater delight than to drive under the cool shade of their 

 over-arching boughs, sheltered from the scorching sun of a July day?" 

 Ah! But after July and August come September and October, and 

 the winter months and then spring. Only a small part of our days 

 are July days. We must have variety. We must have delights for 

 all days, not July days alone. 



I can conceive of nothing more monotonous than an endless 

 ribbon of gray road seen through a never-ending arch of green boughs, 

 except, possibly, the same road without any trees at all. No! It 

 would be deadly monotony and our traveler would again be at his 

 rhyme, only instead of posts, it would be Trees, Trees, Trees, Trees. 

 We must have variety and change. We must have ever new and 

 different beauties. We must not shut out the beautiful distant views. 



