quicksand.

The sun was hot, the sand was deep, and we had pushed and tugged
until the silence was ominous; at length the lowering clouds of
wrath broke, and the Professor said things that cannot be
repeated.

By way of apology, he said, afterwards, while shaking the sand out
of his shoes, "It is difficult to preserve the serenity of the
class-room under conditions so very dissimilar. I understand now
why the golf-playing parson swears in a bunker. It is not right,
but it is very human. It is the recrudescence of the old Adam, the
response of humanity to emergency. Education and religion prepare
us for the common-place; nature takes care of the extraordinary.
The Quaker hits back before he thinks. It is so much easier to
repent than prevent. On the score of scarcity alone, an ounce of
prevention is worth several tons of repentance; and--"

It was so apparent that the Professor was losing himself in
abstractions, that I quietly let the clutches slip until the
machine came to a stop, when the Professor looked anxiously down
and said,--

"Is the blamed thing stuck again?"

We turned off the Bowling Green road to the River road, which is
not only better, but more direct from Napoleon to Perrysburg. It
was the road we originally intended to take; it was down on our
itinerary, and in automobiling it is better to stick to first
intentions.