n by anything but ways and means and,
perhaps, confinement at laborious affairs. Even in the latter case he
occasionally breaks away for a more or less extended period, and
either goes fishing in Canada, shooting in Scotland, or automobiling
in France, with perhaps a rush over a Swiss pass or two, and a dash
around the Italian lakes, and back down the Rhine for a little tour
in Great Britain.

This is as delightful a holiday as one could imagine, and the foreign
tour--which has often been made merely as a succession of nights of
travel in stuffy sleeping-cars or a round of overfeeding orgies at
Parisian hotels and restaurants--has added charms of which the
generation before the advent of automobiles knew nought.

The question of comfortable travel is a never-ending one. The
palanquin, the sedan-chair, the rickshaw, even the humble horse-drawn
buggy have had their devotees, but the modern touring automobile has
left them all far behind, whether for long-distance travel or
promenades at Fontainebleau, in the New Forest or the Ardennes.

There is no question but that, when touring in an automobile, one has
an affection for his steel-and-iron horse that he never felt for any
other conveyance. The horse had some endearing qualities, no doubt,
and we were bound to regard his every want; but he was only a part of
the show, whereas the automobile, although it is nought but an
inanimate combination of wheels and things, has to be humoured and
talked to, and even cursed at times, in order to keep it going. But
it works faithfully nevertheless, and never balks, at least not with
the same crankiness as the horse, and always runs better toward night
(this is curious, but it is a fact), which a horse seldom does. All
the same an automobile is like David Balfour's Scotch advocate: hard
at times to ken rightly--most of the time, one may say without undue
exaggeration. Often an automobile is as fickle as a stage fairy, or
appears to be, but it may be that only your own blind stupidity
accounts for the lack of efficiency. Once in awhile an automobile
gets uproariously full of spirits and runs away with itself, and
almost runs away with you, too, simply for the reason that the
carburetion is good and everything is pulling well. Again it is as
silent and immovable as a sphinx and gives no hint of its present or
expected ailments. It is most curious, but an automobile invents some
new real or fancied complaint with each fresh internal up