led the matter
for me. The trip which I undertook would probably be one of the first to
occur to almost anybody--the drive to Hampton Court Palace, about twelve
or fifteen miles from the central part of the city. It looked easy to
start about two or three o'clock, spend a couple of hours at Hampton
Court and get back to our hotel by six. After trying out my car--which
had reached London some time ahead of me--a few times in localities
where traffic was not the heaviest, I essayed the trip without any
further knowledge of the streets than I had gained from the maps. I was
accompanied by a nervous friend from Iowa who confessed that he had been
in an automobile but once before. He had ridden with a relative through
a retired section of his native state, traversed for the first time by
an automobile, and he had quit trying to remember how many run-aways and
smash-ups were caused by the fractious horses they met on the short
journey. Visions of damage suits haunted him for months thereafter. In
our meanderings through the London streets, the fears for the other
fellow which had harassed him during his former experience, were
speedily transferred to himself. To his excited imagination, we time and
again escaped complete wreck and annihilation by a mere hair's breadth.
The route which we had taken, I learned afterwards, was one of the worst
for motoring in all London. The streets were narrow and crooked and
were packed with traffic of all kinds. Tram cars often ran along the
middle of the street, with barely room for a vehicle to pass on either
side. The huge motor busses came tearing towards us in a manner most
trying to novices, and it seemed, time after time, that the dexterity of
the drivers of these big machines was all that saved our car from being
wrecked. We obtained only the merest glimpse of Hampton Palace, and the
time which we had consumed made it apparent that if we expected to reach
our hotel that night, we must immediately retrace our way through the
wild confusion we had just passed. It began to rain, and added to the
numerous other dangers that seemed to confront us was that of "skidding"
on the slippery streets. When we finally reached our garage, I found
that in covering less than twenty-five miles, we had consumed about four
hours and we had been moving all the time. The nervous strain was a
severe one and I forthwith abandoned any plan that I had of attempting
to do London by motor car. With more knowledge