Gayley's
garage. That's one for every twenty-five people. Figure that out. It
only gives each auto five members of the family and twenty citizens to
haul around. We're about up to the limit. Of course another one hundred
people could buy machines, I suppose; but that would only allow twelve
and a half passengers, admirers, guests, and advisers for each car. That
isn't anywhere near enough. Why, it wouldn't be worth while owning a
machine! As it is, we are all busy. I've ridden in twenty new machines
this year and passed my opinion on them. It has taken a good deal of my
spare time. I've thought sometimes of buying one myself, but I don't
believe it would be right. If I had a car myself, I would have to
neglect all the others. It wouldn't do. Besides, I like to be peculiar.

Is every one in Homeburg a millionaire? Goodness, no! Our brag is that
we have less people per automobile than any other town, but then that's
the ordinary brag with an Illinois small town. We're not much ahead of
the others. Automobiles don't stand for riches out our way. Blamed if I
know what they do represent. Mechanical ingenuity, I guess. Country town
people pick up automobiles as easily as poor people do twins. And they
seem to support them about as inexpensively. If you were to take a trip
around Homeburg at seven A.M. on a Sunday morning, you would find about
eighty-seven automobile owners out in the back yard over, under, or
wrapped around their machines.

In the city you can only tell a car owner these days by his silk socks;
but in the country town the grimy hand is still the badge of the order.
The automobile owner does his own work, like his wife, and on Sunday
morning, instead of hustling for the golf links, he inserts himself into
his overalls and spends a couple of hours trying to persuade the
carbureter to use more air and less gasoline. The interest our
automobile owners take in the internals of their cars is intense. That
is the only thing which mars the pleasure of the professional guest,
such as myself. More than once I've sat in the sun twenty miles from
home while some host of mine has taken his engine down clear to the bed
plate, just because he had the time to do it and wanted to see how the
bearings were standing up.

I've lived in Homeburg all my life, but I haven't yet solved the mystery
of how some of our citizens own machines. It's a bigger mystery than
yours because our automobile owners pay their bills, and the mortg