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MR. JAMES SANDAGE, overseer of the county poor farm, jolted monotonously against his steering wheel, against the standards of his car top, against the youth in the seat beside him as he ground along in low gear over the stony rut-lined trail which represented a public road in Lane County, Tennessee, in summer weather. Now while Mr. Sandage’s thoughts were not actually occupied with this road, still as he jolted onward he held a subconscious sense of easy travel and vehicular comfort. He could not help feeling how much better the roads were in high summer than in the spring or winter. The whole countryside agreed that the roads were “always good this time o’ the year” and that a man "could git over ’em”; an hypothesis dubiously demonstrated by Mr. Sandage’s roaring plunging forward movement.

But all this was merely in the fringe of Mr. Sandage’s mind. In reality he was thinking neither of his car nor the exceptionally fine condition of the thoroughfare. His actual ponderings flowed in two entirely separate streams, and his attention whipsawed from one to the other and back again, over and over, without the overseer being conscious of these restless shifts.

One of Mr. Sandage’s mental alternatives concerned the survey of a railroad which was about to be built through Lane County. This cocked up Mr. Sandage’s spirits mightily. He thought to himself, “Just another stride forward in our county’s progress. Ever’thing’s getting better. That