y, but it was no
use.

Aunt Miranda pleaded with him to keep in near the shore, because she
was getting seasick; but her tears were in vain.

"You must appear calm and indifferent in the presence of danger,"
muttered Uncle Gilbert as they rushed madly into the bosom of a flock of
cows.

[Illustration]

But luck was with them, for with a turn of the wrist Uncle Gilbert
jumped the machine across the road, and all he could feel was the sharp
swish of an old cow's tail across his cheek as they rushed on and out of
that animal's life forever.

Aunt Miranda tried to be brave and to chat pleasantly. "How is Wall
Street these days?" she asked, and just then the machine struck a stone
and she went up in the air.

"Unsettled," answered Uncle Gilbert when she got back, and then there
was an embarrassing silence.

To try to hold a polite conversation, on a motor car in full flight is
very much like trying to repeat the Declaration of Independence while
falling from a seventh-story window.

Then, all of a sudden, the machine struck a chord in G, and started for
Newfoundland at the rate of 7,000,000 miles a minute.

Aunt Miranda threw her arms around Uncle Gilbert's neck, he threw his
neck around the lever, the lever threw him over, and they both threw a
fit.

Down the road ahead of them a man and his wife were quarreling. They
were so much in earnest that they did not hear the machine sneaking
swiftly up on rubber shoes.

As the Benzine Buggy was about to fall upon the quarreling man and wife
Uncle Gilbert squeezed a couple of hoarse "Toot toots" from the horn,
whereupon the woman in the road threw up both hands and leaped for the
man. The man threw up both feet and leaped for the fence.

The last Aunt Miranda saw of them they were entering their modest home
neck and neck, and the divorce court lost a bet.

Then the machine began to climb a telegraph pole, and as it ran down the
other side Aunt Miranda wanted to know for the tenth time if it would
explode.

"How did John tell you to handle it?" she shrieked, as the Rowdy Cart
bit its way through a stone fence and began to dance a two-step over a
strange man's lawn.

"The only way to handle this infernal machine is to soak it in water,"
yelled Uncle Gilbert as they hit the main road again.

"I don't see what family pride has to do with it; there isn't a soul
looking," moaned Aunt Miranda.

"Oh if I could only be arrested for fast riding and get this thing
sto