The trolley-line had been opened only since the last September, but in an effect of familiar use it was as if it had always been there, and it climbed and crooked and clambered about with the easy freedom of the country road which it followed.  It is a land of low hills, broken by frequent reaches of the sea, and it is most amusing, most amazing, to see how frankly the trolley-car takes and overcomes its difficulties.  It scrambles up and down the little steeps like a cat, and whisks round a sharp and sudden curve with a feline screech, broadening into a loud caterwaul as it darts over the estuaries on its trestles.  Its course does not lack excitement, and I suppose it does not lack danger; but as yet there have been no accidents, and it is not so disfiguring as one would think.  The landscape has already accepted it, and is making the best of it; and to the country people it is an inestimable convenience.  It passes everybody’s front door or back door, and the farmers can get themselves or their produce (for it runs an express car) into Portsmouth in an hour, twice an hour, all day long.  In summer the cars are open, with transverse seats, and stout curtains that quite shut out a squall of wind or rain.  In winter the cars are closed, and heated by electricity.  The young motorman whom I spoke with, while we waited on a siding to let a car from the opposite direction get by, told me that he was caught out in a blizzard last Winter, and passed the night in a snowdrift.  “But the cah was so wa’m, I neva suff’ed a mite.”

“Well,” I summarized, “it must be a great advantage to all the people along the line.”

“Well, you wouldn’t ‘a’ thought so, from the kick they made.”

“I suppose the cottagers”—­the summer colony—­“didn’t like the noise.”

“Oh yes; that’s what I mean.  The’s whe’ the kick was.  The natives like it.  I guess the summa folks ’ll like it, too.”

He looked round at me with enjoyment of his joke in his eye, for we both understood that the summer folks could not help themselves, and must bow to the will of the majority.

THE ART OF THE ADSMITH

The other day, a friend of mine, who professes all the intimacy of a bad conscience with many of my thoughts and convictions, came in with a bulky book under his arm, and said, “I see by a guilty look in your eye that you are meaning to write about spring.”

“I am not,” I retorted, “and if I were, it would be because none of the new things have been said yet about spring, and because spring is never an old story, any more than youth or love.”

“I have heard something like that before,” said my friend, “and I understand.  The simple truth of the matter is that this is the fag-end of the season, and you have run low in your subjects.  Now take my advice and don’t write about spring; it will make everybody hate you, and will do no good.  Write about advertising.”  He tapped the book under his arm significantly.  “Here is a theme for you.”