"Get up, get up, get up! Good morning!"

And the new day of travel would begin.

We drank tomato juice and coffee in thick cups, ate ham and eggs in a little cafe on Main Street, which at that hour was sleepy and depopulated, and took our places in the machine. Mr. Adams was waiting for that moment. He would turn to us and begin to talk. And he talked almost without interruption all through the day. He evidently consented to go with us principally because he sensed in us good listeners and conversationalists.

But most remarkable of all was that in no sense could he have been called an idle chatterer. Everything he said was interesting and wise. Throughout the two months of the journey he never once repeated himself. He possessed accurate information on almost all phases of life. An engineer by profession, he had recently retired and was living on a small capital which, in addition to modest means, gave him independence, something he treasured very much and without which he evidently could not live a minute.

"Only by sheer accident I did not become a capitalist," Mr. Adams told us on one occasion. " This is quite serious. It will be interesting for you to hear this. There was a time when I dreamed of becoming a rich man. I made a lot of money and decided to insure myself, so that by the age of fifty I would receive large sums from insurance companies. There is such a form of insurance. I had to pay colossal premiums. But I agreed to that in order to be a rich man in my old age. I selected two of the most respectable insurance companies in the world. The Petersburg Rossiya Company and another very honest German company in Munich. Gentlemen! I felt that even if the rest of the world goes to the devil, nothing could ever happen in Germany and Russia. Their stability was beyond all doubt. But in 1917 you had a revolution, and the insurance company Rossiya went out of existence. Then I transferred all of my hopes to Germany. In 1923 I was exactly fifty years old. I had four hundred thousand marks coming to me. That's very big money, that's colossal money! And in 1923 I received from the Munich Insurance Company a letter like this: ' Most respected Herr Adams: Our company congratulates you on your fiftieth birthday and attaches herewith a cheque for four hundred thousand marks.' This was the most honest insurance company in the world. But, gentlemen, listen! This is very interesting. For all of that money I could buy only one box of matches, because at that time in Germany there was inflation and bills in denominations of billions circulated through the country. I assure you, capitalism is the most elusive thing in the world. But I am happy. I received the greatest prize of all. I did not become a capitalist."

Mr. Adams had an easy-going attitude toward money—a little humour, and very little respect. In that sense he did not at all resemble an American. A real American is ready to be humorous about everything in the world but not about money. Mr. Adams knew many languages. He had lived in Japan, Russia, Germany, India, knew the Soviet Union well —better than many Soviet people know it. He had worked at Dniepro-stroi, in Stalingrad, Cheliabinsk. A knowledge of old Russia made it possible for him to understand the Soviet land as it is rarely understood by foreigners. He had travelled across the U.S.S.R. in hard cars, entered into conversation with workers and collective farmers. He saw the country not only as it opened to his gaze, but he saw it as it had been yesterday and as it would become tomorrow. He saw it in motion, and for that purpose he studied Marx and Lenin, read the speeches of Stalin, and subscribed to Pravda.

Mr. Adams was very absent-minded. Yet his was not the traditional meek absent-mindedness of a scientist, but rather the stormy, aggressive absent-mindedness of a healthy person full of curiosity carried away by a conversation or a thought and for the time being forgetting the rest of the world.

In everything concerned with the journey Mr. Adams was unusually careful and conservative.

"This evening we shall arrive in Chicago," said Mrs. Adams.

"But,Becky, don't talk like that! Maybe we'll arrive and maybe we won't," he replied.

"Look here," we intervened. "It is only a hundred miles to Chicago, and if we figure that we make an average of thirty miles an hour . .."

"Yes, yes, gentlemen!" muttered Mr. Adams. "Oh, but! You don't know anything yet."

"What do you mean, we don't know? It is now four o'clock. We are averaging thirty miles an hour. Thus, we shall be in Chicago at about eight o'clock."

"Maybe we will and maybe we won't. Seriously, gentlemen, seriously, nothing is certain. Oh, no!"

"But what will keep us from reaching Chicago by eight o'clock?"

"You mustn't talk like that! It would be simply foolish to think like that. You don't understand that."

Yet he talked with assurance about world politics and did not want to hear any contradiction. For example, he declared that there would be war in five years.

"But why in exactly five? Why not in seven? "

"No, no, gentlemen! Exactly in five years!"

"But why?"

"Don't ask me why! I know. I tell you there will be war in five years!"

He became very annoyed when contradicted.

"No, no, we won't talk about it!" he exclaimed. "It is downright foolish and ridiculous to think that there will be no war in five years!"

"All right. When we get to Chicago this evening we'll talk about it seriously."

"Gentlemen, you mustn't talk like that—we will be in Chicago this evening. Maybe we'll get there and maybe we won't!"

Not far from Chicago our speedometer indicated the first thousand miles. We shouted hurrah!

"Hooray! Hooray!" cried Mr. Adams, jumping up excitedly on his little cushion. "Hear, hear, gentlemen! Now I can tell you quite definitely: we have covered a thousand miles. Yes, yes! Not `maybe we have covered'; but we have surely covered it! Now we know!"

Every thousand miles it was necessary to change the oil in the machine and to grease it.

We stopped near a service station, which in the moment of need was always at hand. Our machine was lifted on a special electrical frame and, while the mechanic in a striped cap drained out the dark, polluted oil, poured in the new, tested the brakes and greased the parts, Mr. Adams learned how much the man earned, where he was from, and how the people in this town lived. Every, even a passing, acquaintanceship gave Mr. Adams a lot of pleasure. This man was born to mingle with people, to be friends with them. He derived the same pleasure from conversations with a waiter, a druggist, a passer-by from whom he found out about the roads, a six-year-old Negro boy, whom he called "sir," the mistress of a tourist home, or the director of a large bank.

He stood, his hands deep in the pockets of his top-coat, his collar up, without a hat (the parcel, for some reason, did not arrive in Detroit), and greedily yessed the man with whom he was talking:

"Surely! I hear you, sir! Yes, yes, yes! Oh, but, this is very, very interesting! Surely!"

Chicago at night — we were approaching along the broad shore drive that separates the city from Lake Michigan—proved to be astoundingly splendid. To the right was blackness filled with the measured roar of a sea as its waves broke against the shore. Along the shore drive, almost touching each other, several rows of automobiles moved at inordinate speed, casting on the asphalt pavement the dazzling reflection of their headlights. On the left rows of skyscrapers stretched for several miles. ' Their lighted windows faced the lake. The lights of the upper stories of the skyscrapers mingled with the stars. The electric advertisements seemed possessed. Here, as in New York, electricity was trained. It extolled the same gods: Coca-Cola, Johnny Walker Whisky, Camel Cigarettes. Here, too, were the infants that had annoyed us all through the week: the thin infant who did not drink orange juice, and his prospering antipode—the fat, good infant who, appreciating the efforts of the juice manufacturer, consumed it in horse-sized doses.