The best road from Boston to New York is said to be by way of Worcester, Springfield, and through central Connecticut via Hartford and New Haven; but we did not care to retrace our wheels to Worcester and Springfield, and we did want to follow the shore; but we were warned by many that after leaving the Pier we would find the roads very bad.

As a matter of fact, the shore road from the Pier to New Haven is not good; it is hilly, sandy, and rough; but it is entirely practicable, and makes up in beauty and interest what it lacks in quality.

We did not leave Green’s Inn until half-past nine the morning after our arrival, and we reached New Haven that evening at exactly eight,—­a delightful run of eighty or ninety miles by the road taken.

The road is a little back from the shore and it is anything but straight, winding in and out in the effort to keep near the coast.  Nearly all day long we were in sight of the ocean; now and then some wooded promontory obscured our view; now and then we were threading woods and valleys farther inland; now and then the road almost lost itself in thickets of shrubbery and undergrowth, but each time we would emerge in sight of the broad expanse of blue water which lay like a vast mirror on that bright and still September day.

We ferried across the river to New London.  At Lyme there is a very steep descent to the Connecticut River, which is a broad estuary at that point.  The ferry is a primitive side-wheeler, which might carry two automobiles, but hardly more.  It happened to be on the far shore.  A small boy pointed out a long tin horn hanging on a post, the hoarse blast of which summons the sleepy boat.

There was no landing, and it seemed impossible for our vehicle to get aboard; but the boat had a long shovel-like nose projecting from the bow which ran upon the shore, making a perfect gang-plank.

Carefully balancing the automobile in the centre so as not to list the primitive craft, we made our way deliberately to the other side, the entire crew of two men—­engineer and captain—­coming out to talk with us.

The ferries at Lyme and New London would prove great obstacles to anything like a club from New York to Newport along this road; the day would be spent in getting machines across the two rivers.

It was dark when we ran into the city.  This particular visit to New Haven is chiefly memorable for the exceeding good manners of a boy of ten, who watched the machine next morning as it was prepared for the day’s ride, offered to act as guide to the place where gasoline was kept, and, with the grace of a Chesterfield, made good my delinquent purse by paying the bill.  It was all charmingly and not precociously done.  This little man was well brought up,—­so well brought up that he did not know it.

The automobile is a pretty fair touchstone to manners for both young and old.  A man is himself in the presence of the unexpected.  The automobile is so strange that it carries people off their equilibrium, and they say and do things impulsively, and therefore naturally.