loose, nuts gone for the want of cotter-pins; it is as if
apprentice blacksmiths had spent their idle moments in
constructing a machine.

The carriage work is hopelessly bad. The building of carriages is
a long-established industry, employing hundreds of thousands of
hands and millions of capital, and yet in the entire United States
there are scarcely a dozen builders of really fine, substantial,
and durable vehicles. Yet every cross-road maker of automobiles
thinks that if he can only get his motor to go, the carpenter next
door can do his woodwork. The result is cheap stock springs,
clips, irons, bodies, cushions, tops, etc., are bought and put
over the motor. The use of aluminum bodies and more metal work
generally is helping things somewhat; not that aluminum and metal
work are necessarily better than wood, but it prevents the
unnatural union of the light wood bodies, designed for cheap
horse-vehicles, with a motor. The best French makers do not build
their bodies, but leave that part to skilled carriage builders.




CHAPTER SEVEN BUFFALO TO CANANDAIGUA
BEWARE OF THE COUNTRY MECHANIC

The five hundred and sixty-odd miles to Buffalo had been covered
with no trouble that delayed us for more than an hour, but our
troubles were about to begin.

The Professor had still a few days to waste frivolously, so he