In the days of the stage-coach we had on our summer journeys all these delights, the scents of the wood, the field, the garden; we had the genial sunlight, the fresh air of mountain, plain, and sea; and all the wild and beautiful sights which made the proper time for travel--the summer--truly joyful. Now we may enjoy a place when we get there, but we have a poor substitute for the coach for the actual travelling--a dirty railway car heated almost to tinder by the sun, with close foul air (and the better the car the fouler and closer the air) filled, if we try to have fresh air, with black smoke and cinders; clattering and noisy ever, with occasional louder-shrieking whistles and bells, and sometimes a horrible tunnel--it has but one redeeming quality, its speed, for thereby the journey is shortened.
[Illustration: Taylor's Tavern. 1777, Danbury, Connecticut.]
Cheerful friends on the old roads were the milestones and guideposts. Milestones had an assured position in social life, a dignified standing. It would be told of a road as a great honor and distinction, and told fitly in capitalized sentences thus, "This Elegant road is fully Set with well-cut Milestones." A few of the old provincial milestones remain, and put us closely in touch with the past. In Governor Hutchinson's day milestones were set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Several of these are still standing; one is in Worcester, in the heart of the city, marked "42 Mls. to Boston, 50 Mls. to Springfield, 1771." Another is in Sutton. It is five feet high and nearly three feet wide. It is marked "48 mls. to Boston. B. W." The letters B. W. stand for Bartholomew Woodbury, a genial tavern-keeper of Sutton. It shows a custom which obtained at that date. It was deemed most advantageous to a tavern to have a milestone in front of it. Possibly the tale of the stone shown in its lettering urged wayworn travellers to halt and rest within the welcoming door. Bartholomew Woodbury's Tavern was a few rods from the spot marked for the stone, but the government permitted him to set this stone by his doorside, at his own expense, beside the great horse-block. Tavern-keeper and tavern are gone, and the old road sees few travellers. Occasionally some passer-by, inquisitive like myself of the presence of the old stone, will halt as did the traveller of old, and pull away the curtain of vines, and read the lettering of this gravestone of the old Woodbury Tavern.