# The Toll House explained — Travel Essays > Chapter companion for Travel Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson. ## What happens The narrator describes the Toll House, a sleepy mountain inn where consumptive boarders pass their days in idleness. The inn stirs to life only with the arrival of the daily stages, which bring a brief, thrilling bustle of travelers and news from the outside world before the place sinks back into its habitual slumber. ## Themes in this chapter ### Freedom vs. Confinement The Toll House is a place of idleness and confinement for consumptive boarders, yet the narrator finds a paradoxical freedom in its dreamy, timeless slumber. ### Human Connection and Community The brief, intense encounters with stage passengers create a fleeting but powerful sense of human connection amid the solitude. ## Character check-ins ### Mr. Jennings The happy engineer who idles about the bar and verandah, waiting for something to happen. ### Mr. Corwin A consumptive boarder who does as little as possible at the Toll House. ### Rufe Hanson A consumptive boarder who occasionally rouses the sleepers for a game of croquet. ### The Hansons Neighbors living up the hill from the Toll House. ### The Chinese The Chinese cook glimpsed in the back parts of the inn, and a Chinese desperado encountered among the stage passengers. ## Key lines > The Toll House, standing alone by the wayside under nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-tank; its backwoods, toll-bar, and well trodden croquet ground; the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw; a glimpse of the Chinese cook in the back parts; and Mr. Hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend or borrow books;—dozed all day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep. The Toll House, a solitary inn beneath swaying pines, drowsed through the day in the dusty sunlight, with its stream, water tank, toll gate, and croquet lawn; the stable hand idled by the door, the Chinese cook was visible in the kitchen, and Mr. Hoddy stood ready in the bar, eager to exchange books. _Opening description of the inn's sleepy atmosphere._ > The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly credible; the thrill of the great shower of letters from the postbag, the childish hope and interest with which one gazed in all these strangers’ eyes. The genuine excitement of that hour was almost unbelievable; the joy of receiving a flood of letters, and the childlike curiosity with which we looked into the faces of every stranger. _Describes the emotional impact of the stagecoach arrivals._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se/chapters/the-toll-house - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/travel_essays_se/chapters