R. F. D. 195 



and newly dampened woollen drying by the stove. 

 Familiar faces come in out of the night; the mail is 

 sorted; you hear the rustle of newspapers; and then the 

 crowd fades away, following Tom who has gone home to 

 put the horse in her stall and get his own supper. 



Through Summer and Winter, through storm and 

 shine, the rural carrier drives every morning over that 

 route, and home again every afternoon twelve miles 

 from this mountain intervale to the little town by the 

 railroad, and twelve long miles back again bringing his 

 messages from the larger world. It is a beautiful road 

 he travels, but it may also be a severe one. The winter 

 winds howl past that sentinel pine where the road 

 breaks out of the forest; the drifts pile deep in the cuts 

 and across the river flats. Tom knows from long ex- 

 perience exactly where he will encounter bare ground 

 and where the snow will suddenly pack into diagonal 

 ridges across the road, some rock or tree or wall splitting 

 the blast, so that his "pung" rides them like a boat on a 

 choppy sea. Yet Tom and his old horse get the mail 

 through. That is what Uncle Sam pays him for, and he 

 harnesses up on a bitter morning, when the thermometer 

 registers twenty below, with no thought of heroism, to 

 make a twelve-mile trip which no automobile on earth 

 could negotiate and which would probably put the 

 average city dweller of to-day into the hospital for a 

 month. In Spring he splashes along through the mud ; in 

 the Autumn, when the rains come down from the cloud- 



