THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 381 
own interests by making plans for the extension of 
the road that brought them here. They came up 
from Spartanburg, a sign of the new era that has 
dawned to transform the mountains. For already 
from Spartanburg there comes a wide, new road, a 
great red serpent whose head is pointed up the Paco- 
let Valley, and that will never stop until it has coiled 
and writhed its way over the helpless rampart of the 
Blue Ridge to its goal — in Asheville? No, not in 
Asheville, but through it and on and down out into 
the now teeming Western world beyond. The auto- 
mobile, which is doing for this country what the 
military power has so long been doing for Europe, 
networking it with perfect roads, will soon speed 
from Jacksonville, Florida, across the plains, the 
foothills, and the astonished mountains, down to 
Knoxville, Tennessee, over the broad highway now 
being constructed for that purpose. 
Wherever you go the portable sawmill is ahead of 
you, the temporary railway of the lumberman dis- 
dainfully penetrating the "inaccessible" places. 
And wherever you go the people of the mountains 
are waking up out of the care-free, simple life of the 
past into the wearing, tumultuous life of the present, 
and that is what causes those pangs of regret. The 
comforts that are pouring in are not in themselves 
regrettable; it is only the price one has to pay for 
them, the exchange of Arcadia for Gotham. 
Social transitions are always trying, and perhaps 
peculiarly so here, where the awakening conscious- 
ness suddenly sees the glitter of the prize without 
