But on sober reflection I come to the conclusion that I should have taken a more hopeful view if I had not been so high up; if, for example, I had been sitting with the driver where I could have seen what happened at the last moment.

There was much comfort in the old couplet:—­

  “Betwixt the saddle and the ground,
  He mercy sought and mercy found.”

And betwixt the pedestrian and the motor-bus, there are many chances of safety that I could not foresee.  The old gentleman was perhaps more spry than he looked.  The nursemaids and the butcher’s boy must assuredly have perished unless they happened to have their wits about them.  But in all probability they did have their wits about them, and so did the driver of the motor-bus.

THE TORYISM OF TRAVELERS

I

When we think of a thorough-going conservative we are likely to picture him as a stay-at-home person, a barnacle fastened to one spot.  We take for granted that aversion to locomotion and aversion to change are the same thing.  But in thinking thus we leave out of account the inherent instability of human nature.  Everybody likes a little change now and then.  If a person cannot get it in one way, he gets it in another.  The stay-at-home gratifies his wandering fancy by making little alterations in his too-familiar surroundings.  Even the Vicar of Wakefield in the days of his placid prosperity would occasionally migrate from the blue bed to the brown.  A life that had such vicissitudes could not be called uneventful.

When you read the weekly newspaper published in the quietest hill-town in Vermont, you become aware that a great deal is going on.  Deacon Pratt shingled his barn last week.  Miss Maria Jones had new shutters put on her house, and it is a great improvement.  These revolutions in Goshenville are matters of keen interest to those concerned.  They furnish inexhaustible material for conversation.

The true enemy to innovation is the traveler who sets out to see historic lands.  His natural love of change is satiated by rapid change of locality.  But his natural conservatism asserts itself in his insistence that the places which he visits shall be true to their own reputations.  Having journeyed, at considerable expense, to a celebrated spot, he wants to see the thing it was celebrated for, and he will accept no substitute.  From his point of view the present inhabitants are merely caretakers who should not be allowed to disturb the remains intrusted to their custody.  Everything must be kept as it used to be.

The moment any one packs his trunk and puts money in his purse to visit lands old in story he becomes a hopeless reactionary.  He is sallying forth to see things not as they are, but as they were “once upon a time.”  He is attracted to certain localities by something which happened long ago.  A great many things may have happened since, but these must be put out of the way.  One period of time must be preserved to satisfy his romantic imagination.  He loves the good old ways, and he has a curiosity to see the bad old ways that may still be preserved.  It is only the modern that offends him.