12wonderY
I've been collecting water personifications and I find good ones for roads and travel in general. So here they go.
"The road was hot and dusty; but, nevertheless, it allured. Beginning in the hopeless ugliness of a small town's main street, it turned a corner at the postoffice and wandered forth, lazily, at its own capricious will. It widened for a moment at a group of overhanging willows, as though to rest in the fragrant shade, paused where the little stream crooned in the grass, went beside it for a time, then crossed it upon a wooden bridge, and climbed upward toward the cool green hills.
In its nature the road was opposed to things that hurried. To the care-free foot of the traveler who had plenty of time, it yielded a gentle acceptance and even gave some sort of sympathetic response. A swift step was annoying. A dog that ran would find himself very thirsty by the time it reached the brook, a horse and cart would stir up definite resentment, and the daring motor car that intruded upon the road with discordant wheezing would swiftly be mantled and choked by revengeful dust."
first page of A Weaver of Dreams by Myrtle Reed.
"The road was hot and dusty; but, nevertheless, it allured. Beginning in the hopeless ugliness of a small town's main street, it turned a corner at the postoffice and wandered forth, lazily, at its own capricious will. It widened for a moment at a group of overhanging willows, as though to rest in the fragrant shade, paused where the little stream crooned in the grass, went beside it for a time, then crossed it upon a wooden bridge, and climbed upward toward the cool green hills.
In its nature the road was opposed to things that hurried. To the care-free foot of the traveler who had plenty of time, it yielded a gentle acceptance and even gave some sort of sympathetic response. A swift step was annoying. A dog that ran would find himself very thirsty by the time it reached the brook, a horse and cart would stir up definite resentment, and the daring motor car that intruded upon the road with discordant wheezing would swiftly be mantled and choked by revengeful dust."
first page of A Weaver of Dreams by Myrtle Reed.
22wonderY
I found a Corra Harris book from 1912, The Recording Angel, and this is the first page:
"If you take a certain train at two o'clock in the afternoon, say, at Twenty-third Street Station in New York, and travel steadily southward till you are an hour behind time, you come to the carmine hills of Georgia - round, soft hills that the grasses love.... The hills do not notice you as you pass. They are suckling the grass. They are asleep in the golden sunshine. They are dreaming in the perfume of the cotton blooms. You would not be astonished if one of them should turn over and stretch and show the other breast, they are so very comfortable, so very fertile and lazy. No wonder that every train coming southward in this direction loses time. You cannot "stoke" even a New England engine enough to make it hurry in such an atmosphere of repose and somnambulance."
"If you take a certain train at two o'clock in the afternoon, say, at Twenty-third Street Station in New York, and travel steadily southward till you are an hour behind time, you come to the carmine hills of Georgia - round, soft hills that the grasses love.... The hills do not notice you as you pass. They are suckling the grass. They are asleep in the golden sunshine. They are dreaming in the perfume of the cotton blooms. You would not be astonished if one of them should turn over and stretch and show the other breast, they are so very comfortable, so very fertile and lazy. No wonder that every train coming southward in this direction loses time. You cannot "stoke" even a New England engine enough to make it hurry in such an atmosphere of repose and somnambulance."
3aviddiva
Lovely! Now I have to locate The Recording Angel...
42wonderY
"Travelers will give their oath that the Norte is the laziest road south of the Rio Grande. It is a dawdler - an idler that takes its own sweet time about unwinding the miles from the small village of Santa Maria to the even smaller one of Buena Vista.
At the slightest excuse it will wander away from its true direction - to avoid a slight rise or to circle gingerly a prickly clump of cacti. And never, within the memory of its oldest traveler, has it neglected to make a wide detour into every farmyard it passes, zig-zagging frantically to avoid the attacks of unfriendly dogs, merely to call out a cheerful but dusty "hola!" into the doorway of each adobe dwelling."
- The Small One by Charles Tazewell
At the slightest excuse it will wander away from its true direction - to avoid a slight rise or to circle gingerly a prickly clump of cacti. And never, within the memory of its oldest traveler, has it neglected to make a wide detour into every farmyard it passes, zig-zagging frantically to avoid the attacks of unfriendly dogs, merely to call out a cheerful but dusty "hola!" into the doorway of each adobe dwelling."
- The Small One by Charles Tazewell
52wonderY
“The road, which had been splendid all the way to Asti and beyond, seemed suddenly to weary of virtue and turn eagerly to vice.”
My Friend the Chauffeur
My Friend the Chauffeur
