e other
fad or fancy and take up with this last, which, be it here
reiterated, is no _fad_.

The great point in favour of the automobile is its sociability. Once
one was content to potter about with a solitary companion in a buggy,
with a comfortable old horse who knew his route well by reason of
many journeys. To-day the automobile has driven thoughts of solitude
to the winds. Two in the tonneau, and another on the seat beside you
in front--a well-assorted couple of couples--and one may make the
most ideal trips imaginable.

Every one looks straight ahead, there is no uncomfortable twisting
and turning as there is on a boat or a railway train, and each can
talk to the others, or all can talk at once, which is more often the
case. It is most enjoyable, plenty to see, exhilarating motion, jolly
company, absolute independence, and a wide radius of action. What
mode of travel can combine all these joys unless it be ballooning--of
which the writer confesses he knows nothing?

On the road one must ever have a regard for what may happen, and
roadside repairs, however necessary, are seldom more than makeshifts
which enable one to arrive at his destination.

If you break the bolt which fastens your cardan-shaft or a link of
your side-chains, you and your friends will have a chance to harden
your muscles a bit pushing the machine to the next village, unless
you choose to wait, on perhaps a lonely road, for a passing cart
whose driver willing, for a price, to detach his tired horse to haul
your dead weight of a ton and a half over a few miles of hill and
dale. This is readily enough accomplished in France, where the
peasant looks upon the procedure as a sort of allied industry to
farming, but in parts of England, in Holland, and frequently in
Italy, where the little mountain donkey is the chief means of
transportation, it is more difficult.

The question of road speed proves nothing with regard to the worth of
an individual automobile, except that the times do move, and we are
learning daily more and more of the facility of getting about with a
motor-car. A locomotive, or a marine engine, moves regularly without
a stop for far greater periods of time than does an automobile, but
each and every time they finish a run they receive such an
overhauling as seldom comes to an automobile.

In England the automobilist has had to suffer a great deal at the
hands of ignorant and intolerant road builders and guardians. Police
traps