mobile has begun to rage in our midst, the garage is the
center of our city life. The machine owners stop each day for
lubricating oil and news and conversation; the non-owners stroll over to
inspect the visiting cars and give advice when necessary; and the
loafers have abandoned the implement store, Emerson's restaurant, and
the back of McMuggins' drug store in favor of the garage, because they
find about seven times as much there to talk about. The city garage
can't compare with ours for adventure and news. I have spent a few hours
in your most prominent car-nurseries and I haven't heard anything but
profanity on the part of the owners and Broadway talk among the
chauffeurs.

In the country it's different. Take a busy day at Gayley's, for
instance. It usually opens about three A.M., when Gayley crawls out of
bed in response to a cataract of woe over the telephone and goes out
nine miles hither or yon to haul in some foundered brother. Gayley has a
soft heart and is always going out over the country at night to reason
with some erring engine; but since last April first, when he traveled
six miles at two A.M. in response to a call and found a toy automobile
lying bottom-side up in the road, he has become suspicious and
embittered, and has raised his prices.

At six A.M. Worley Gates, who farms eight miles south, comes in to catch
an early train and delivers the first bulletin. The roads to the south
are drying fast, but he went down the clay hill sidewise and had to go
through the bottom on low. At seven, Wimble Horn and Colonel Ackley and
Sim Bone drop in while waiting for breakfast. Bone thinks he'll drive to
Millford, but doesn't think he can get in an hour's business and get
back by noon.

This starts the first debate of the day, Colonel Ackley contending that
he has done the distance easily in an hour-ten, and Sim being frankly
incredulous. Experts decide that it can be done with good roads. Colonel
says he can do it in mud and can take the hills on high; says he never
goes into low for anything. Bill Elwin, one of our gasless experts,
reminds him of the time he couldn't get up Foster's Hill on second and
was passed by three automobiles and fourteen road roaches. This is a
distinct breach of etiquette on Bill's part, for he was riding with
Colonel at the time and should have upheld him. The discussion is just
getting good when Ackley's wife calls him home to breakfast over the
'phone, and the first tourist of th