ng,
railroading, from every known means of locomotion, in that you are
really lost to the world. In coaching or posting, one knows with
reasonable certainty the places that can be made; the itinerary is
laid out in advance, and if departed from, friends can be notified
by wire, so that letters and telegrams may be forwarded.

With an automobile all is different. The vagaries of the machine
upset every itinerary. You do not know where you will stop,
because you cannot tell when you may stop. If one has in mind a
certain place, the machine may never reach it, or, arriving, the
road and the day may be so fine you are irresistibly impelled to
keep on. The very thought that letters are to be at a certain
place at a certain date is a bore, it limits your progress,
fetters your will, and curbs your inclinations. One hears of
places of interest off the chosen route; the temptation to see
them is strong exactly in proportion to the assurances given that
you will go elsewhere.

The automobile is lawless; it chafes under restraint; will follow
neither advice nor directions. Tell it to go this way, it is sure
to go that; to turn the second corner to the right, it will take
the first to the left; to go to one city, it prefers another; to
avoid a certain road, it selects that above all others.

It is a grievous error to tell friends you are coming; it puts
them to no end of inconvenience; for days they expect you and you
do not come; their feeling of relief that you did not come is
destroyed by your appearance.

The day we were expected at a friend's summer home at the sea-side
we spent with the Shakers in the valley of Lebanon, waiting for a
new steering-head. Telegrams of inquiry, concern, and consolation
reached us in our retreat, but those who expected us were none the
less inconvenienced.

Then, too, what business have the dusty, grimy, veiled, goggled,
and leathered party from the machine among the muslin gowns, smart
wraps, and immaculate coverings of the conventional house party;
if we but approach, they scatter in self-protection.

From these reflections it is only too plain that the automobile
--like that other inartistic instrument of torture, the grand piano
--is not adapted to the drawing-room. It is not quite at home in
the stable; it demands a house of its own. If the friend who
invites you to visit him has a machine, then accept, for he is a
brother crank; but if he has none, do not fill his generous soul
wi