gallon. When a motor is working perfectly, the consumption of
gasoline is always a pretty fair indication of the character of
the roads. Our machine was supposed to make twenty miles to the
gallon, and so it would on level roads, with the spark well
advanced and the intake valve operating to a nicety; but under
adverse conditions more gasoline is used, and with the
hill-climbing gear four times the gasoline is used per mile.

The long run of this first day was most encouraging; but the test
is not the first day, nor the second, nor even the first week, nor
the second, but the steady pull of week in and week out.

With every mile there is a theoretical decrease in the life and
total efficiency of the machine; after a run of five hundred or a
thousand miles this decrease is very perceptible. The trouble is
that while the distance covered increases in arithmetical
progression, the deterioration of the machine is in geometrical.
During the first few days a good machine requires comparatively
little attention each day; during the last weeks of a long tour it
requires double the attention and ten times the work.

No one who has not tried it can appreciate the great strain and
the wear and tear incidental to long rides on American roads.
Going at twenty or twenty-five miles an hour in a machine with
thirty-two-inch wheels and short wheel-base gives about the same
exercise one gets on a horse; one is lifted from the seat and
thrown from side to side, until you learn to ride the machine as
you would a trotter and take the bumps, accordingly. It is trying
to the nerves and the temper, it exercises every muscle in the
body, and at night one is ready for a good rest.