IS it an illusion of romance, merely, or is it true that, in spite of the fact that the French, governmentally speaking, have been out of old Vincennes-the very region of it-for over a hundred and fifty years, and that nearly all we know of the town of twenty thousand has come into existence in the last fifty years, there still exists in it, hovers over it, the atmosphere of old France? Do we see, always, what we would like to see, or is there something in this matter of predisposition, the planting of a seed, however small, which eventually results in a tree of the parent stock? I was scarcely prepared to believe that there was anything of old France about this town-it seemed quite too much to ask, and yet rolling leisurely through these streets, it seemed to me that there was a great deal of it. The houses, quite a number of them, had that American French Colonial aspect which we have all come to associate with their forbears, the palaces and decorative arts of the high Louis! France, the modifier of the flamboyant dreams of the Renaissance! France, the mother, really, of the classic styles of England! The cooler, more meditative and Puritan spirit took all that was best in the dreams and super- grand taste of the France of the Kings and Emperors and gave us Heppelwhite and Sheraton, and those charming architectural fancies known as Georgian. Or am I wrong?

And here in Vincennes, in the homes at least, there was something reminiscent of this latter, while in the principal streets-Third and Second-and in the names of some of the others, there was a suggestion of such towns or cities as Rouen and Amiens-a mere suggestion, perhaps, some might insist, but definite enough to me. As a matter of fact, tucked away in this southern river region of Indiana, it seemed very French, and I recalled now that my first and only other connection with it had been through a French woman, a girl protégé of my mother, who had married (she was a wild, pagan creature, as I can testify) the manager or captain of the principal fire station in the then city of twelve thousand. Before her marriage, at Terre Haute, she had done sewing for my mother, in our more prosperous days, and when conditions grew so bad that my mother felt that she must get out of Terre Haute, instead of going to Sullivan direct (I do not think her original intention was to go to Sullivan at all) she wrote this French woman of her troubles, and upon her invitation visited her there. For a period of six weeks, or longer, we lived in the apartment which was a part of the fire captain's perquisites, and a part of the central fire station itself-the rear half of the second floor. There must have been some unimportant connection between this and the county jail or central police station, or both, for in a building adjoining at the rear I remember there was a jail, and that I could go back-, if I chose, downstairs and out, and see some of the incarcerated looking out through the bars. It was a pleasant enough place as such things go, and my mother must have had some idea of remaining in Vincennes, for not long after we arrived my sister and brother and I were put in another Catholic School,-the bane of my youthful life. This did not last very long, however, for shortly thereafter we were taken out and removed to Sullivan. Eleven years later, at the time of my mother's' death in Chicago, this woman, who was then and there a dressmaker, came to cry over her coffin and to declare my mother the best friend she ever had.

My youthful impressions of Vincennes, sharp as they may have been at the time, had by now become very vague. I remember that from the fire tower, where hung an alarm bell and to which we were occasionally permitted to ascend, the straight flowing Wabash River was to be seen; also that northward, toward Sullivan, were Merom Bluffs, where pleasure seekers from Vincennes were accustomed to drive. My mother went once. Also, that certain tow headed and dark girls seemed very numerous about the fire station at night. Also that once, during our stay, there was a big fire, and that we all arose and went out to join the great throng watching it. Our host, the captain, was seen to mount a ladder and break in a window and disappear in a red glow, much to my mother's and my own horror. But he came back alive.

In ambling about, I found the exact firehouse, enlarged and improved, "where it has always been," as one of the neighboring tradesmen told me-new automobile engines and trucks in it-and then I was ready to go. I had seen all I could hope to remember, even dimly. We hurried to a neighboring garage, took on a store of oil and gasoline, and were off in the twilight and the moonlight, for Evansville.

* * * * * * *

Uncertain is the outcome of all automobilists' plans forever and ever, as with all other plans. Although we had inquired and inquired, getting the exact way (and Franklin's conferences on these matters were always ex- tended and minute) we were soon safely on the wrong road. We had been told to make for a place called Decker, via a town called Purcell, but soon in the shades of a fast falling night we were scuttling up a cowpath, under dark and ghostly trees.

"How would it do to call on some squirrel or chipmunk and pay our respects?" suggested Franklin. "They appear to be about the only people living here."

We decided to go back.

Once more on a fairly good road again, a mile or so back, we met a charming milkmaid, with fine arms, pink cheeks, and two brimming buckets of milk. Modestly, she told us we were on the wrong road.

"You should have kept the macadam road to Purcell. This goes to St. Francisville across the river. But if you go up here a mile Or two and take the first road to your left, it will bring you to St. Thorna, and there's a road on from there to Decker. But it would be better if you went back."

"Back? Never!" I said to Franklin, as the girl went on, and thinking of the miles we had come. "It's a fine night. Look at the moon." (There was an almost full moon showing a golden tip in the eastern sky.) "Soon it Will be as bright as day. Let's ride on. We'll get to Evansville by morning, anyhow. It's only sixty miles or so.”

"Yes, if we could go straight," amended Bert, pessimistically.

“Oh, We'll go straight enough. She says St. Thomas is only eight miles to our left."

So on we went. The moon rose. Across flat meadows in the pale light, lamps in distant houses looked like ships at sea, sailing off a sandy coast. There were clumps of pines or poplars gracefully distributed about the landscape. The air was Moist, but so fragrant and warm I These were the bottom lands of the White and Wabash Rivers, quite marshy in places, and fifteen miles farther south we would have to cross the White River on a ferry.

We sped on. The road became sandy and soft. Now and then it broke into muddy stretches where we had to go slow. From straggling teamsters we gathered characteristic and sometimes amusing directions.

"Yuh go up here about four miles to Ed Peters' place. It's the big white store on the corner-yuh can't miss it. Then yuh turn to yer left about three miles, till yuh come to the school on the high ground there (a rise of about eight feet it was). Then yuh turn to yer right and go down through the marsh to the iron bridge, and that'll bring yer right into the Decker Road."

We gathered this as we were leaving St. Thomas, a lonely Catholic outpost, with a church and sisters' school of some kind.

On and on. Riding is delightful in such a country. In lovely cottages as we tore past I heard mellifluous voices singing in some archaic way. You could see lighted lamps on the family tables,-a man or woman or both sitting by reading. On doorsteps, in dooryards now and then were loungers, possibly indifferent to the mosquitoes. The moon cleared to a silvery perfection and lighted all the fields and trees. There were owl voices and bats. In Ed Peters' place a crowd of country bumpkins were disporting themselves.

"Har, har, har I Whee-oh I" You should have heard the laughter. It was infectious.

A man outside directed us further. We came to the school, the iron bridge in. the marsh-, and then by a wrong road away from Decker, but we found it finally.

It was a railroad town. On the long steps of a very imposing country store, lighted by flaring oil lamps, a great crowd of country residents (all men) were gathered to see the train come in,-an event soon to happen, I gathered. They swam in a Vierge or Goyaesque haze,-a full hundred of them, their ivory faces picked out in spots by the uncertain light. We asked of one the road to Evansville, and he told us to go back over the bridge and South, or to our left, as we crossed the bridge.

"The ferry hain't here. It may be as ye can't get across t'night. The river's runnin' purty high."

"That would be a nice note, wouldn't it?" commented Bert.

"Well, Decker looks interesting to me," observed Franklin. "What's the matter with Decker? I'd like to sketch that crowd anyhow."

We went on down to the ferry to see.

En route we encountered a perfectly horrible stretch of road-great, mucky ruts that almost stalled the car-and in the midst of it an oil well, or the flaring industry of driving one. There was a great towering well frame in the air, a plunger, a' forge, an engine, and various flaring torches set about and men working. It was so attractive that, although up to this moment we had been worrying about the car, we got out and went over, leaving it standing in inches and inches of mud. Watching the blaze of furnaces for sharpening drills and listening to the monotonous plunging of the drill, we sat about here for half an hour basking in the eerie effect of the torches in the moonlight and against the dark wood. It was fascinating.

A little later we came to the waterside and the alleged ferry. It was only a road that led straight into the river-a condition which caused Franklin to remark that they must expect us to drive under. At the shore was a bell on a post, with a rope attached. No sign indicated its import, but since far on the other side we could see lights, we pulled it vigorously. It clanged loud and long. Between us and the lights rolled a wide flood, smooth and yet swiftly moving, apparently. Small bits of things could be seen going by in the pale light. The moon on the water had the luster of an oyster shell. There was a faint haze or fog which prevented a clear reflection.

But our bell brought no response. We stood here between bushes and trees admiring the misty, pearly river, but we wanted to get on, too. On the other side was a town. You could hear laughing voices occasionally, and scraps of piano playing or a voice singing, but the immediate shore line was dark. I seized the rope again and clanged and clanged "like a house afire," Bert said.

Still no response.

"Maybe they don't run at night," suggested Bert. "He said the water might be too high," commented Franklin. "It looks simple enough."

Once more I pulled the bell.

Then after another drift of moments there was a faint sound as of scraping chains or oars, and after a few moments more, a low something began to outline itself in the mist. It was a flat boat and it was coming, rigged to an overhead wire and propelled by the water. It was coming quite fast, I thought. Soon it was off shore and one of the two men aboard-an old man and a young one-was doing something with the rear chain, pulling the boat farther upstream, nearer the wire.

"Git that end pole out of the way, " called the older of the two men, the one nearer us, and then the long, flat dish scraped the shore and they were pushing it far in- land with poles to make it fast.

"What's the matter? Couldn't you hear the bell?" I inquired jocundly.

"Yes, I heard the bell, all right," replied the older man truculently. "This here boat ain't supposed to run nights anyhow in this here flood. Y'can't tell what'll happen, logs and drifts comin' down. We've lost three automobiles in her already as it is.”

I speculated nervously as to that while he grumbled and fussed.

"Hook 'er up tight," he called to his assistant. "She might slip out yet."

"But up at Decker," I added mischievously, "they said you ran all night."

"They said! They said! Whadda they know about this here ferry? I'm runnin' this, I guess. Havin' to git out here nights, tar-erd (he was meaning tired) as I am, an' take this thing back an' forth. I'm gittin' sick on it. I hain't got to do it."

"I know," observed Franklin, "but we're very anxious to get across tonight. We have to be in Evansville by morning anyhow."

"Well, I don't know nothin' about that. All I know is everybody's in a all-fired hurry to git across."

"Well, that’s all right now, doctor," I soothed. "We'll fix this up on the other side. You just take us over like a good sort."

The aroma of a tip seemed to soothe him a little.

"Be keerful how you run that car," he commented to Bert. "One feller ran his car on an' up-ended this thing an' off he went. We never did get the machine out. She was carried on down stream."

Bert manwuvred the car very gingerly. Then we poled off in the moonlight, and I could see plainly that there was a flood. We were slow getting out to where the main current was, but once there its speed shocked me. A vast, sullen volume of water was pouring down-on and away into the Wabash, the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Gulf. I was thinking how wonderful water is anyhow-out of the unknown, into the unknown, like ourselves, it comes and goes. And here, like petty actors in a passing play, we were crossing under the moon-the water as much a passing actor as any of us.

"Better pay out more at the stern there," called the old man to his helper. "She's pushin' her pretty hard."

The water was fairly boiling along the upstream side.

"At any minute now," he continued, “a bundle of drift or logs or weeds is like to come along and foul us, and then if that there wire gave way, where'd we be?"

I felt a little uncomfortable at the thought, I confess -Franklin's good machine, his inability to swim, the eddying swiftness of this stream.

Fortunately, at this rate, the center was soon passed and we began to near the other shore. The current drove us up into a deep-cut shallow inlet where they poled the punt close to shore and fastened it.

Then Bert had to make a swift run with the machine, for just beyond the end of the boat was a steep incline up which we all had to clamber.

"Don't let 'er slip back on yer," he cautioned. "If yer do, she's like to go back in the water"...and Bert sent "her" snorting uphill.

We paid the bill-fifty cents-(twentyfive of that being tacked on as a penalty for routing him out "tar-erd as he was" and fifteen cents extra for disturbing observations about drifts, lost automobiles, and the like). Then we bustled up and through an interesting, cleanly looking place called Hazleton (population twentyfive hundred) and so on toward Evansville, which we hoped surely to reach by midnight.