down a steep place into the sea, like certain of his
species mentioned in the Bible, and the question adjusts itself.

Meanwhile, however, the decent motorist must suffer for the other's
sins. A friend says: "The only time I dare be seen in my machine is
between 11 A.M. and 4 P.M. Before that time people point me out as a
'joy-rider' returning from a night's debauch. After that time I am a
'joy-rider' bound for a night of it." The complaint rings true. The
exhilaration aroused by a punctured tire in the open country gathers
strength from the remarks of the spectators who wonder if you made your
money honestly. In town a defective sparkplug brings the close attention
of a crowd which exchanges opinions as to whether the lady in the
tonneau is your wife. All agree that you must have mortgaged your home
to buy the machine.

And yet it is evident that much misunderstanding could be avoided if we
had a simple code of rules for people who cross the street just as there
are regulations for the autoist. A few such rules suggest themselves: 1.
If one is about to cross the street in front of an auto, one should do
so either before the man in the car succumbs to heart failure or after,
but not while the driver is wrestling with death; it is in such cases
that one is apt to get hurt. 2. If one is in the middle of the road and
sees a car approaching, one should move either (_a_) away from the car,
(_b_) towards the car, (_c_) to the right, (_d_) to the left, or (_e_)
stand still; under no circumstances should one attempt to combine (_a_),
(_b_), (_c_), (_d_), and (_e_). 3. The safest place from which to
ascertain the make of an automobile or to estimate its cost is the
sidewalk.

XXX

THE SAMPLE LIFE

The hour, the occasion, and the scene were conducive to melancholy. We
had walked a good fifteen miles into the open country and back again
under chilly clouds, and were now paying for it with an empty sense of
weariness and disenchantment. There is nothing so depressing as a bare
room lit up by flaring gas-jets against the gloom of a late afternoon of
rain; and the lights in Scipione's little cellar restaurant flared away
in the most outrageous manner. Harding, across the table from me,
wretchedly fluttered the pages of a popular magazine and looked
ill-natured and horribly unkempt. The new table-cloths had not yet been
laid for dinner. The sawdust on the floor was mostly mire. Angelina,
the cook, was screaming at Paolo