announce by another series of explosions a second disaster at the other
end of the street. A crowd collected there, too.

"Oh, dear!" said Honora, "don't you think we ought to take the train, Mr.
Brent? If I were to miss a dinner at my own house, it would be too
terrible!"

"There's nothing to worry about," he assured her. "Nothing broken. It's
only the igniting system that needs adjustment."

Although this was so much Greek to Honora, she was reassured. Trixton
Brent inspired confidence. There was another argument with the chauffeur,
a little more animated than the first; more greasy plugs taken out and
wiped, and a sharper exchange of compliments with the crowd; more
grinding, until the chauffeur's face was steeped in perspiration, and
more pistol shots. They were off again, but lamely, spurting a little at
times, and again slowing down to the pace of an ox-cart. Their progress
became a series of illustrations of the fable of the hare and the
tortoise. They passed horses, and the horses shied into the ditch: then
the same horses passed them, usually at the periods chosen by the demon
under the hood to fire its pistol shots, and into the ditch went the
horses once more, their owners expressing their thoughts in language at
once vivid and unrestrained.

It is one of the blessed compensations of life that in times of
prosperity we do not remember our miseries. In these enlightened days,
when everybody owns an automobile and calmly travels from Chicago to
Boston if he chooses, we have forgotten the dark ages when these machines
were possessed by devils: when it took sometimes as much as three hours
to go twenty miles, and often longer than that. How many of us have had