Lovers of the horse frequently say that automobiling is to
coaching as steam yachting is to sailing,--all of which argues the
densest ignorance concerning automobiling, since there is no sport
which affords anything like the same measure of exhilaration and
danger, and requires anything like the same amount of nerve, dash,
and daring. Since the days of Roman chariot racing the records of
man describe nothing that parallels automobile racing, and, so far
as we have any knowledge, chariot racing, save for the plaudits of
vast throngs of spectators, was tame and uneventful compared with
the frightful pace of sixty and eighty miles an hour in a
throbbing, bounding, careering road locomotive, over roads
practically unknown, passing persons, teams, vehicles, cattle,
obstacles, and obstructions of all kinds, with a thousand
hair-breadth escapes from wreck and destruction.

The sport may not be pretty and graceful; it lacks the sanction of
convention, the halo of tradition. It does not admit of smart
gowns and gay trappings; it is the last product of a mechanical
age, the triumph of mechanical ingenuity, the harnessing of
mechanical forces for pleasure instead of profit,--the automobile
is the mechanical horse, and, while not as graceful, is infinitely
more powerful, capricious, and dangerous than the ancient beast.




CHAPTER THREE THE START
THE RAILROAD SPIKE