The Branch Road

HE who lives on a branch road has compensations. The trains run more slowly than on the main lines. They stop at every crossing and show a friendly interest in every farmhouse and stock-pen. On the branch road we sit down; we have time to sit down. The main-line traveler has a strained expression on his countenance. Minutes before he has arrived at his destination he stands in a long line in the aisle, suit-case in hand, waiting for the train to stop or to approach stopping. On the branch road nobody stands in the aisle, nobody is in a hurry. Only the commercial traveler gathers his dented and curiously constructed baggage around him and stands up in the aisle in the main-line fashion, waiting for the train to make a landing. We, old stagers at the business, do not stir until the conductor has called the station the third time; it would be useless. Slowness is a branch-line virtue. He deserves congratulation who has found that speed and restlessness are not essential to human happiness. Along the main line there is often lack of this knowledge. In the whirlpool dwell the Children of the Unquiet Heart.

Acquaintanceship is an acquisition to those who travel or reside on the side streets — the branch lines. When we come to the branch-road town we find that we know everybody and everybody knows us. We have more faith in our fellows because we know them better. We lend more money without security in the branch-road town; that is, the few who have money to lend. We laugh at each other’s jokes. We smile with the joys, and sorrow in the griefs. Hermits dwell in the main-line towns, not along the branch road.

The branch-road train is democratic. There are no parlor cars and no Pullmans on it. Bank presidents and farmhands, society belles and negro mammies, politicians and philanthropists all ride together. The branch-line train is to grown-ups what the public school is to children — it levels them all down to the same plane. It is compulsory democracy. If all the other characteristic attributes of the branch-road train were disadvantages, the compensation which its enforced democracy brings would outweigh them all.

Akin to the democracy is the freedom of the branch train. No one may be very dignified off the main traveled road. He forgets that he is preacher or doctor or lawyer or millionaire and remembers that he is only a man. The traveler who will, in a Pullman smoking-car, hardly ask his neighbor for a match, will, when he is shut up for an hour with the motley, mixed, and miscellaneous crowd on the branch road, carry on an animated conversation with any comer. To the average man of the world, a thing of starch and society, this is refreshing compensation. No traveler is really free outside the branch-road train. Here he may laugh and smoke and go without a necktie, and none is there to molest or make him afraid, for all are thus privileged.

The end of the branch road is Peace. The branch road brings time for rest, a moment for reflection, a taste of the amenities of life, and a slowing-up in the all-pervading struggle. Here is acquaintanceship, democracy, a glimpse of open air and freedom. Here is time for development. Near to the main thoroughfares grow many graceful and polished saplings. For the gnarled and towering kings of the forest one must needs go along the by-paths.