No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 239 



let every town, county and State try to conceive and bring 

 forth a quarter of a mile of road that will not . require a 

 standing army of road menders for its maintenance. Moun- 

 tains of rocks are waiting to be fabricated into paths of 

 peace and pleasantness. Let us begin with samples of road 

 wherever fit workmen and material can be got together, 

 with their keeping up, wrought into their solid foundations ; 

 and let us have men engaged in the construction of roads 

 who are not gainers by their early destruction. The field 

 is large enough for all the world to work in. 



The American mind runs to monopoly as naturally as 

 water runs down hill. Nature herself keeps road-stone 

 where it is hard to get. But a State government that is 

 good for anything ought to be good for opening and test- 

 ing stone-road quarries. State chemists should have been 

 ready, long ago, with the composition of the best country 

 roads. Limestone quarries yawn with the tedium of wait- 

 ing to be tested more intelligently than they have ever been. 

 Who knows what a little dust of iron will do in a broken 

 limestone road? 



In sight of an ignorant and heedless public, good quarries 

 may be be beaten out of use by conniving officials, and 

 replaced by inferior metal. A first-rate roadstone can 

 better afford to give itself to be rightly used than to sell at 

 any price for a blundering street. 



Last March, in Salisbury, England, where flints are 

 plenty, I found a short, red-faced official, watching, with a 

 steam roller, the crushing of limestone into the mud of a 

 narrow thoroughfare. 



"Better 'n flints?" I asked 'at his elbow. 



"We are trying an experiment. The limestone quarry 

 people have influence with the Board." 



' ' P'raps the flints have been mismanaged ? " 



"Well," — with a wink, — "there may have been some 

 o' that ! " 



" But do you think the limestone a better metal?" 



"Wo, — I don't." 



That was good English for me. The ignorant taxpayers 

 on that street were being worked for all they were worth, — 

 whether with limestone or flints. The delicious harmonies 



