R E 



N 



VOL. XXII. 



JUNE, 1905 



No. 6 



The road is like the story — a vehicle 

 for instruction. The story leads the 

 mind on, and holds the interest by a 

 thread of narrative, and at the same 

 time, if it be worth the reading', it pre- 

 sents some truths in a way that fastens 

 them on the mind. 



The road leads the vagrant auto- 

 mobilist on, if it is a right sort of road, 

 by the same way of interesting. It is 

 seductive. It is not all visible. There 

 are corners and bends which occasion- 

 ally shut off the view, yet, like the 

 skilfully planned break in a serial story 

 with its "To be continued," you are 

 lured on with added interest. The im- 

 agination carries you around the bends 

 in advance of the eyesight. 



A road suggests questions and also 

 gives answ r ers quite surprisingly beyond 

 your guesses. It is the curiosity of the 



explorer which calls him who is on 

 pleasure bent, to the roads, and per- 

 haps a strain of nomad blood in the 

 veins. It may be we should have a 

 fellow-feeling for the modern tramp, 

 except in that we love byways rather 

 than highways. What is beyond? is a 

 very primal question, tracing back 

 through atavism to Eden. I like to be- 

 lieve that it was inquisitiveness, rather 

 than acquisitiveness, the wanting to 

 know, rather than the wanting to gain, 

 which tempted the early navigators into 

 strange seas. Inquisitiveness has moved 

 the world. The men who find things 

 and do things must ask questions and 

 allow tlie imagination to go beyond the 

 seeming end of the quest. 



A road is like a work of art — it in- 

 cites the imagination. In this I con- 

 tend that it is an educator of no mean 



435 



