The Friendly Road

The Friendly Road: New Adventures in Contentment is a collection of pastoral essays by Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946), published under the pen name "David Grayson" by Doubleday, Page & Company in the United States in 1913. It consists of twelve chapters with illustrations by Thomas Fogarty. The narrator is a farmer who, at the height of spring plowing, temporarily sets aside his farm work, shoulders a simple pack, and sets out on foot along country roads. The book has no continuous plot; instead it is strung together from episodes of travel: he stops at roadside homes, discusses life's difficulties with a country minister, spends time with the cheerful Stanley family, meets the socialist Bill Hahn, visits the Weed family in their garden, and encounters peddlers hawking their wares along the road; he also listens to banter beside a barn stable and has a chance encounter with a street girl. In the latter half of the journey he enters the city and is drawn into an ongoing strike, sympathizing with the workers' situation while being shocked by the city's dirt, poverty, and crowding; in the end he returns to the farm, to Harriet's side, and rediscovers the solidity and warmth of everyday life. The book's tone is leisurely, humorous, and introspective; it is regarded as a sequel to the "Contentment" series (Adventures in Contentment and Adventures in Friendship) and is one of the representative works of the early twentieth-century American "back to the land" writing trend, bearing the imprint of the author's Progressive Era observations.