It requires days and weeks to become acquainted with all the
peculiarities and weaknesses of an automobile, to know its strong
points and rely upon them, to appreciate its failings and be
tender towards them. After you have become acquainted, do not risk
the friendship by letting the capricious thing out of your sight.
It is so fickle that it forms wanton attachments for every one it
meets,--for urchins, idlers, loafers, mechanics, permits them all
sorts of familiarities, so that when, like a truant, it comes
wandering back, it is no longer the same, but a new creature,
which you must learn again to know.

It is monotonously lonesome running an automobile across country
alone; the record-breaker may enjoy it, but the civilized man does
not; man is a gregarious animal, especially in his sports; one
must have an audience, if an audience of only one.

The return of the Professor made it necessary to find some one
else. There was but one who could go, but she had most
emphatically refused; did not care for the dust and dirt, did not
care for the curious crowds, did not care to go fast, did not care
to go at all. To overcome these apparently insurmountable
objections, a semi-binding pledge was made to not run more than
ten or twelve miles per hour, and not more than thirty or forty
miles per day,--promises so obviously impossible of fulfillment on
the part of any chauffeur that they were not binding in law. We
started out well within bounds, making but little over forty miles
the first day; we wound up with a glorious run of one hundred and
forty miles the last day, covering the Old Sarnia gravel out of
London, Ontario, at top speed for nearly seventy miles.