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Updated: June 7, 2025
"What a splendid road that was, Monsieur Tartarin, broad and well kept, with its mile-stones, its little heaps of road-metal at regular distances, and its pretty clumps of vines and olive-trees on either hand! Then, again, the roadside inns so close together, and the changes of horses every five minutes!
Every one who has studied carefully the life histories of patients, especially of children, and has endeavored in so doing to follow step by step the experiences through which they reach the various mile-stones on their journey, must have been astonished to observe the evidences of PREPAREDNESS on their part for each new step in this long journey.
The way I took through Muitzeskill and Castleton to Greenbush, is marked with New York and Albany guide posts, but none of the old mile-stones adorn its path.
Flaming orange tiger-lilies, most homely and cheerful bloom of country gardens, have spread from the deserted dooryards, across the untrodden foot-paths, in weedy thickets a-down the hill, and shed their rank odor unheeded on the air. Some of the old provincial mile-stones, however, remain, and put us closely in touch with the past.
Soon another of the old mile-stones appears, as usual on the west side of the road, and opposite is a small granite monument which commemorates the graveyard of the soldier dead in the adjoining field, where there are probably more revolutionary dead buried than in any other spot in the State. This neighborhood was a headquarters for part of the army between 1776 and 1783.
In this, indeed, lies his power. He makes his church interesting, his sermons interesting, his lectures interesting. He is himself interesting! Because of his being interesting, he gains attention. The attention gained, he inspires. Biography is more than dates. Dates, after all, are but mile-stones along the road of life.
By provincial enactment in Governor Hutchinson's time, mile-stones were set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Some of these stones are still standing. There is one in the middle of the city of Worcester, on Lincoln Street the "New Connecticut Path;" it is of red sandstone, and is marked, "42 Mls to Boston, 50 Mls to Springfield, 1771."
One report has it that this precaution was taken by the inhabitants at the approach of the invading army, another that the Germans themselves demolished the sign-posts and plastered over the mile-stones in order to paint on them misleading and encouraging distances.
The meals are long, so long that there is literally no end to them; they are eternal. It is customary to mark certain points in the endless route of appetite with mile-stones named breakfast, dinner, and supper; but these points have no more positive existence than the imaginary lines and angles of the geometrician.
All measure of value, all estimates of greatness, of joy or sorrow, of health or suffering, are relative; we judge by comparison, and if in recalling these former depths we temper unreasonable criticism of waning friendships, accelerate effort as we pass the mile-stones of achievement, and stimulate appreciation of liberty in the younger generation, the mention will not be fruitless.
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