For five weeks to a day we wandered over the eastern country at
our own sweet will, not a care, not a responsibility,--days
without seeing newspapers, finding mail and telegrams at
infrequent intervals, but much of the time lost to the world of
friends and acquaintances.

Touring on an automobile differs from coaching, posting,
railroading, from every known means of locomotion, in that you are
really lost to the world. In coaching or posting, one knows with
reasonable certainty the places that can be made; the itinerary is
laid out in advance, and if departed from, friends can be notified
by wire, so that letters and telegrams may be forwarded.

With an automobile all is different. The vagaries of the machine
upset every itinerary. You do not know where you will stop,
because you cannot tell when you may stop. If one has in mind a
certain place, the machine may never reach it, or, arriving, the
road and the day may be so fine you are irresistibly impelled to
keep on. The very thought that letters are to be at a certain
place at a certain date is a bore, it limits your progress,
fetters your will, and curbs your inclinations. One hears of
places of interest off the chosen route; the temptation to see
them is strong exactly in proportion to the assurances given that
you will go elsewhere.

The automobile is lawless; it chafes under restraint; will follow
neither advice nor directions. Tell it to go this way, it is sure
to go that; to turn the second corner to the right, it will take
the first to the left; to go to one city, it prefers another; to
avoid a certain road, it selects that above all others.