CHAPTER FIVE ON TO BUFFALO
"GEE WHIZ!!"

From Painesville three roads led east,--the North Ridge, Middle
Ridge, and South Ridge. We followed the middle road, which is said
to be by far the best; it certainly is as good a gravel road as
one could ask. Some miles out a turn is made to the South Ridge
for Ashtabula.

There is said to be a good road out of Ashtabula; possibly there
is, but we missed it at one of the numerous cross roads, and soon
found ourselves wallowing through corn-fields, climbing hills, and
threading valleys in the vain effort to find Girard,--a point
quite out of our way, as we afterwards learned.

The Professor's bump of locality is a depression. As a passenger
without serious occupation, it fell to his lot to inquire the way.
This he would do very minutely, with great suavity and becoming
gravity, and then with no sign of hesitation indicate invariably
the wrong road. Once, after crossing a field where there were no
fences to mark the highway, descending a hill we could not have
mounted, and finding a stream that seemed impassable, the
Professor quietly remarked,--

"That old man must have been mistaken regarding the road; yet he
had lived on that corner forty years. Strange how little some
people know about their surroundings!"