gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried green fronds around their winter
nakedness. As we rode slowly along, with a leisure I am sure all the
motor-car world has forgotten exists, the two old boys on the front seat
hummed and chuckled happily while I breathed in great gulps of a large,
meadow-sweet spring tang that seemed to fairly soak into the circulation of
my heart. The February day was cool with yet a kind of tender warmth in its
little gust of Southern wind that made me feel as does that brand of very
expensive Rhine wine which Albert at the Salemite on Forty-second Street in
New York keeps for Gale Beacon specially, and which makes Gale so furious
for you not to recognize, remember about, and comment upon at his really
wonderful dinners to bright and shining lights in art and literature.
Returning from New York to the Riverfield Road through the Harpeth Valley,
I also discovered upon the damsel Spring a hint of a soft young costume of
young green and purple and yellow that was as yet just a mist being draped
over her by the Southern wind.

"I feel like the fairy princess being driven into a land of enchantment,
Mr. Golden Bird," I remarked as I leaned back upon the soft old cushions
and took in the first leisurely breath of the air of the open road that my
lungs had ever inhaled: one simply gulps air when seated in a motor-car.
"It is all so simple and easy and--"

Just at this moment happened the first real adventure of my quest, and at
that time it seemed a serious one, though now I would regard it as of very
little moment. Suddenly there came the noise of snipping cords, the feeling
of jar and upheaval, and before I could turn more than half-way around for
purposes of observation, the entire feminine Bird family in their temporary
crate abode slid down into the dust of the road with a great crash. I held
my breath while, with a jolt and a bounce and a squeak of the heavy old
springs, Uncle Cradd brought the ancestral family coach to a halt about ten