good enough automobile for me."

The hold-all was soon strapped in place, and at half-past nine we
were off for Pittsfield.

Passing the Tilden homestead, we soon began the ascent of the
mountain, following the superb new State road.

The old road was through the Shaker village and contained grades
which rendered it impossible for teams to draw any but the
lightest loads. It was only when market conditions were very
abnormal that the farmers in the valley would draw their hay,
grain, and produce to Pittsfield.

The new State road winds around and over the mountain at a grade
nowhere exceeding five per cent. and averaging a little over four.
It is a broad macadam, perfectly constructed.

In going up this easy and perfectly smooth ascent for some six or
seven miles, the disadvantage of having no intermediate-speed
gears was forcibly illustrated, for the grade was just too stiff
for the high-speed gear, and yet so easy that the engine tended to
race on the low, but we had to make the entire ascent on the
hill-climbing gear at a rate of about four or five miles an hour;
an intermediate-gear would have carried us up at twelve or fifteen
miles per hour.

CHAPTER TWELVE AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL
"THE COURT CONSIDERS THE MATTER"

In Pittsfield the machine frightened a lawyer,--not a woman, or a
child, or a horse, or a donkey,--but just a lawyer; to be sure,
there was nothing to indicate he was a lawyer, and still less that
he was unusually timid of his kind, therefore no blame could
attach for failing to distinguish him from men less nervous.

That he was frightened, no one who saw him run could deny; that he
was needlessly frightened, seemed equally plain; that he was
chagrined when bystanders laughed at his exhibition, was highly
probable.

Now law is the business of a lawyer; it is his refuge in trouble
and at the same time his source of revenue; and it is a poor
lawyer who cannot make his refuge pay a little something every
time it affords him consolation for real or fancied injury.

In this case the lawyer collected exactly sixty cents' worth of
consolation,--two quarters and a dime, the price of two lunches
and a cup of coffee, or a dozen "Pittsfield Stogies," if there be
so fragrant a brand;--the lay mind cannot grasp the possibilities
of two quarters and a ten-cent piece in the strong and resourceful
grasp of a Pittsfield lawyer. In these thrifty New England towns
one always gets a great many pennies i