Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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A
<div class="poem">
<p>Make but a world of rest:<br />
Swifter than striking lightning<br />
The Aladdin of the soul builds in the heart<br />
A world of unresting hell...<br />
And, oh ye shunners of war, ye are gruelled in a war <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> of the spirit,</span><br />
In a battle of nerves and blood-vessels and the ghost-<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> haunted brain,</span><br />
And the death of delight...<br />
Hence, whip ye to battle:<br />
Live ye to the uttermost:<br />
Abide the adventure.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Neither from the woe,<br />
Nor from the war,<br />
Think ye to escape...<br />
It helps nothing that ye shut your eyes, oh, cloistered <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> cowards and gilded idlers!</span><br />
For neither shall cushion nor buffet ease the sharp <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> shock of life,</span><br />
Neither shall delicate music in hushed hotels drown out <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> the roar of the battling streets . . .</span><br />
Neither shall wingéd wheels carry you away to the <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> place of peace . . .</span><br />
How can ye go from yourselves, deluded ones?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>To turn out typewriters,<br />
To invent a new breakfast food,<br />
To devise a dance that was never danced until now,<br />
To urge a new sanitation, and a swifter automobile—<br />
Have the life-surging heavens no business but this?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>I feared sublimity:<br />
I was a little afraid of God:<br />
Silence and space terrified me, bringing the thought of <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> what an irritable clod I was and how soon death </span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> would gulp me down... </span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Why did you hate to be by yourself,<br />
And why were you sick of your own company?
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Such the question, and this the answer:
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>But now myself calls me...<br />
The skies demand me, though it is but ten in the <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> morning:</span><br />
The earth has an appointment with me, not to be <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> broken...</span><br />
I must accustom myself to the gaunt face of the Sub-<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> time...</span><br />
I must see what I really am, and what I am for,<br />
And what this city is for, and the Earth and the stars <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> in their hurry...</span>
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>This fear has reared cities:<br />
The cowards flock together by the millions lest they <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> should be left alone for a half hour...</span><br />
With church, theater and school,<br />
With office, mill and motor,<br />
With a thousand cunning devices, and clever calls to <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> each other,</span><br />
They escape from themselves to the crowd...
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Oh, I have loved it all:<br />
Snug rooms, the talk, the pleasant feast, the pictures:<br />
The warm bath of humanity in which I relaxed and <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 3em;"> soaked myself:</span><br />
And never, I hope, shall I be without it—at times...
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Rock roads and deep snow in the high Sierras were encountered and mastered, streams were forded and washouts passed, adobe mud into which the machine sank deep and became tightly imbedded failed to change the plucky operator's mind about crowding the motor eastward toward the hoped-for goal. It was the soft, shifting, bottomless, rolling sand—not so bad to look upon from car windows, but terrible when actually encountered— that caused the abandonment of the enterprise and resulted in the announcement by wire to eastern newspaper connections that the trip was "off."
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Covering the North American continent from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic Ocean in an automobile has been attempted by Alexander Winton, president of The Winton Motor Carriage Company, of Cleveland. That the expedition failed is no fault of the machine Mr. Winton used, nor was it due to absence of grit or determination on the part of the operator. Neither was the failure due to roads. The utter absence of roads was the direct and only cause.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>After twelve hours' severe experience and the rain still pouring down, halt is made abreast of a lane leading to a ranchman's home. This ranchman is A. W. Butler. He came down to the road and replying to interrogations tells you that to Rio Vista, nine miles ahead, the road is particularly bad because of plowing and grading. Arrangements are made for our staying all night with him. The machine is run in his barn, we eat supper with intense relish, go to bed and get up early to find more rain, but a breaking up of the clouds with prospect of sunshine later.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>The storm that day caused us to speculate largely as to whether some of the many bolts of lightning hitting close around us would not strike the machine, demolish it completely, and incidentally put the operator and passenger out of business.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Passed the night comfortably, and when the road was taken next morning (May 29) at 6 o'clock, the sun was shining and Mr. Gates predicted no rain for the day.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>Arrived at the Gap and Mr. Winton soon developed uneasiness because of the enforced delay in the trip. Next morning he announced his intention of making a temporary repair and working ahead slowly through the snow.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>When the New Hampshire Rocks were met, trouble seemed to be ahead. I asked Mr. Winton if he would put the machine to what appeared to me the supreme and awful test. "Of course I will," was the short and meaning answer, and on went the machine. One big bump and I shot into the air like a rocket. I was not thrown from the machine, however, and thereafter busied myself hanging on with hands and bracing with feet. At every turn and twist in the road, the rocks grew larger, and I wondered if anything mechanical could stand the terrible punishment.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>A few miles from the ferry, a tree had fallen across the road. Mr. Winton used the ax to splendid advantage and, after some delay, the road was clear, and we were going ahead once more. Reached Sacramento at 1:15 P.m., but delayed in California's capital city just long enough to take on five gallons of gasoline. One we went toward the Sierras, passing through Roseville, Rocklin, Loomis, Penry, New Castle, Auburn, Colfax, Cape Horn Mills, and when darkness was fast approaching halt was made in the little gold mining town of Gold Run.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>On the following morning (May 24) at 7 o'clock, the repair had been completed. When darkness enveloped us that evening, the machine had covered seventeen miles. And such a day of battle. When it was over, we had reached and passed the summit of the high Sierras, the machine was hard and fast in a snow bank at the bottom of "Tunnel No. 6 hill," a treacherous descent, along which there was great peril every moment.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>That day we plunged through four unbridged streams, and in one place where a bad washout had occurred, it became necessary for us to build a bridge before the machine would “take the ditch.” We lugged railroad ties—many ties from a pile close to the railroad tracks some distance away. And they were heavier than five-pound boxes of chocolate, but we finally got enough and bumped the machine through and on its way.
</p>
</div> +
<div class="poem">
<p>We walked back to Summit Station and stayed at the hotel that night. Next morning, aided by some kindly disposed railroad men who could handle shovels most effectively, the machine was dislodged.
</p>
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