ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

Thornton, gesticulating wildly, disappeared round the corner

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

BY CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

With Illustrations by OTTO LANG

New York Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers

Copyright, 1903, By Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1907, By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. The stories in this volume were copyrighted separately, as follows: “Araminta and the Automobile,” Copyright, 1903, By The Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia “The Deception of Martha Tucker,” Copyright, 1901, By The Century Co. “While the Automobile Ran Down,” Copyright, 1900, By The Century Co. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

Mr. Reviewer and My Dear Readers,

I have been asked to say a few words to you before you get busy with my little book that is filled with “Cheerful Americans” going out for automobile rides.

A generation or two ago, there was a poor writer (I mean poor in this world’s goods, of course) and he saw people riding about in automobiles as if they owned them, and it made him wish he could ride about in one as if he owned it. But he lacked the nerve, so he had to be content with trolleys.

After a while he made believe that he had bought an automobile, and he rode around in it with “Araminta,” and enjoyed the motion so much that he set others to riding in automobiles that he made himself in his study, and he was much pleased at the way they “went.”

After a while he made a collection of these stories and they went some more, and now they are off for a cross country trip that will undoubtedly result in the critics saying of the writer, “He has the pen of a Charles Dickens;” or “he reminds one of Robert Louis Stevenson at his best;” or “he succeeds, as no man since Sir Walter Scott has succeeded, in writing automobile stories that cause the helpless and fascinated reader to sit up all night regardless of anything save the flight of the machine;” or perhaps they will say “the mantle of Bret Harte has fallen upon him, and with the possible exception of Nathaniel Hawthorne no one has written such tales of the clutch and brake and sparker.”

Readers, need I tell you who that poor writer was? The poor boy who in 1865 had never even seen an automobile stands before you, and his name is

Charles Battell Loomis.

Illustrations

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

[10]

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

Some persons spend their surplus on works of art; some spend it on Italian gardens and pergolas; there are those who sink it in golf, and I have heard of those who expended it on charity.

None of these forms of getting away with money appealed to Araminta and myself. As soon as it was ascertained that the automobile was practicable and would not cost a king’s ransom, I determined to devote my savings to the purchase of one.

Araminta and I live in a suburban town; she because she loves Nature, and I because I love Araminta.[12] We have been married for five years.

I am a bank clerk in New York, and morning and night I go through the monotony of railway travel, and for one who is forbidden to use his eyes on the train and who does not play cards it is monotony, for in the morning my friends are either playing cards or else reading their papers, and one does not like to urge the claims of conversation on one who is deep in politics or the next play of his antagonist; so my getting to business and coming back are in the nature of purgatory. I therefore hailed the automobile as a Heaven-sent means of swift motion with an agreeable companion, and with no danger of encountering either newspapers or cards. I have[13] seen neither reading nor card-playing going on in any automobile.

The community in which I live is not progressive, and when I said that I expected to buy an automobile as soon as my ship came in I was frowned upon by my neighbors. Several of them have horses, and all, or nearly all, have feet. The horsemen were not more opposed to my proposed ownership than the footmen—I should say pedestrians. They all thought automobiles dangerous and a menace to public peace, but of course I pooh-poohed their fears and, being a person of a good deal of stability of purpose, I went on saving my money, and in course of time I bought an automobile of the electric sort.

[14]

“Young man, experience teaches more in half an hour than books or precepts do in a year”

Araminta is plucky, and I am perfectly fearless. When the automobile was brought home and housed in the little barn that is on our property, the man who had backed it in told me that he had orders to stay and show me how it worked, but I laughed at him—good-naturedly yet firmly. I said, “Young man, experience teaches more in half an hour than books or precepts do in a year. A would-be newspaper man does not go to a school of journalism if he is wise; he gets a position on a newspaper and learns for himself, and through his mistakes. I know that one of these levers is to steer by, that another lets loose the power, and that there is a foot-brake. I also know that the machine is charged,[15] and I need to know no more. Good-day.”

Thus did I speak to the young man, and he saw that I was a person of force and discretion, and he withdrew to the train and I never saw him again.

Araminta had been to Passaic shopping, but she came back while I was out in the barn looking at my new purchase, and she joined me there. I looked at her lovingly, and she returned the look. Our joint ambition was realized; we were the owners of an automobile, and we were going out that afternoon.

Why is it that cheap barns are so flimsily built? I know that our barn is cheap because the rent for house and barn is less than what[16] many a clerk, city pent, pays for a cramped flat; but again I ask, why are they flimsily built? I have no complaint to make. If my barn had been built of good stout oak I might to-day be in a hospital.

It happened this way. Araminta said, “Let me get in, and we will take just a little ride to see how it goes,” and I out of my love for her said, “Wait just a few minutes, dearest, until I get the hang of the thing. I want to see how much go she has and just how she works.”

Araminta has learned to obey my slightest word, knowing that love is at the bottom of all my commands, and she stepped to one side while I entered the gayly painted vehicle and tried to move out of[17] the barn. I moved out. But I backed. Oh, blessed, cheaply built barn. My way was not restricted to any appreciable extent. I shot gayly through the barn into the hen yard, and the sound of the ripping clapboards frightened the silly hens who were enjoying a dust-bath, and they fled in more directions than there were fowls.

I had not intended entering the hen yard, and I did not wish to stay there, so I kept on out, the wire netting not being what an automobile would call an obstruction. I never lose my head, and when I heard Araminta screaming in the barn, I called out cheerily to her, “I’ll be back in a minute, dear, but I’m coming another way.”

And I did come another way. I[18] came all sorts of ways. I really don’t know what got into the machine, but she now turned to the left and made for the road, and then she ran along on her two left wheels for a moment, and then seemed about to turn a somersault, but changed her mind, and, still veering to the left, kept on up the road, passing my house at a furious speed, and making for the open country. With as much calmness as I could summon I steered her, but I think I steered her a little too much, for she turned toward my house.

I reached one end of the front piazza at the same time that Araminta reached the other end of it. I had the right of way, and she deferred to me just in time. I removed[19] the vestibule storm door. It was late in March, and I did not think we should have any more use for it that season. And we didn’t.

I had ordered a strongly built machine, and I was now glad of it, because a light and weak affair that was merely meant to run along on a level and unobstructed road would not have stood the assault on my piazza. Why, my piazza did not stand it. It caved in, and made work for an already overworked local carpenter who was behind-hand with his orders. After I had passed through the vestibule, I applied the brake and it worked. The path is not a cinder one, as I think them untidy, so I was not more than muddied. I was up in an instant,[20] and looked at the still enthusiastic machine with admiration.

“Have you got the hang of it?” said Araminta.

Now that’s one thing I like about Araminta. She does not waste words over non-essentials. The point was not that I had damaged the piazza. I needed a new one, anyway. The main thing was that I was trying to get the hang of the machine, and she recognized that fact instantly.

I told her that I thought I had, and that if I had pushed the lever in the right way at first, I should have come out of the barn in a more conventional way.

She again asked me to let her ride, and as I now felt that I could better cope with the curves[21] of the machine I allowed her to get in.

“Don’t lose your head,” said I.

“I hope I sha’n’t,” said she, dryly.

“Well, if you have occasion to leave me, drop over the back. Never jump ahead. That is a fundamental rule in runaways of all kinds.”

Then we started, and I ran the motor along for upward of half a mile after I had reached the highway, which I did by a short cut through a field at the side of our house. There is only a slight rail fence surrounding it, and my machine made little of that. It really seemed to delight in what some people would have called danger.

“Araminta, are you glad that I saved up for this?”

[22]“I am mad with joy,” said the dear thing, her face flushed with excitement mixed with expectancy. Nor were her expectations to be disappointed. We still had a good deal to do before we should have ended our first ride.

So far I had damaged property to a certain extent, but I had no one but myself to reckon with, and I was providing work for people. I always have claimed that he who makes work for two men where there was only work for one before, is a public benefactor, and that day I was the friend of carpenters and other mechanics.

Along the highway we flew, our hearts beating high, but never in our mouths, and at last we saw a team approaching us. By “a[23] team” I mean a horse and buggy. I was raised in Connecticut, where a team is anything you choose to call one.

The teamster saw us. Well, perhaps I should not call him a teamster (although he was one logically): he was our doctor, and, as I say, he saw us.

Now I think it would have been friendly in him, seeing that I was more or less of a novice at the art of automobiling, to have turned to the left when he saw that I was inadvertently turning to the left, but the practice of forty years added to a certain native obstinacy made him turn to the right, and he met me at the same time that I met him.

The horse was not hurt, for which[24] I am truly glad, and the doctor joined us, and continued with us for a season, but his buggy was demolished.

Of course I am always prepared to pay for my pleasure, and though it was not, strictly speaking, my pleasure to deprive my physician of his turn-out, yet if he had turned out it wouldn’t have happened—and, as I say, I was prepared to get him a new vehicle. But he was very unreasonable; so much so that, as he was crowding us—for the seat was not built for more than two, and he is stout—I at last told him that I intended to turn around and carry him home, as we were out for pleasure, and he was giving us pain.

I will confess that the events of[25] the last few minutes had rattled me somewhat, and I did not feel like turning just then, as the road was narrow. I knew that the road turned of its own accord a half-mile farther on, and so I determined to wait.

“I want to get out,” said the doctor tartly, and just as he said so Araminta stepped on the brake, accidentally. The doctor got out—in front. With great presence of mind I reversed, and so we did not run over him. But he was furious and sulphurous, and that is why I have changed to homeopathy. He was the only allopathic doctor in Brantford.

I suppose that if I had stopped and apologized, he would have made up with me, and I would not have[26] got angry with him; but I couldn’t stop. The machine was now going as she had done when I left the barn, and we were backing into town.

Through it all I did not lose my coolness. I said: “Araminta, look out behind, which is ahead for us, and if you have occasion to jump now, do it in front, which is behind,” and Araminta understood me.

She sat sideways, so that she could see what was going on, but that might have been seen from any point of view, for we were the only things going on—or backing.

Pretty soon we passed the wreck of the buggy, and then we saw the horse grazing on dead grass by the[27] roadside, and at last we came on a few of our townfolk who had seen us start, and were now come out to welcome us home. But I did not go home just then. I should have done so if the machine had minded me and turned in at our driveway, but it did not.

Across the way from us there is a fine lawn leading up to a beautiful greenhouse full of rare orchids and other plants. It is the pride of my very good neighbor, Jacob Rawlinson.

The machine, as if moved by malice prepense, turned just as we came to the lawn, and began to back at railroad speed.

I told Araminta that if she was tired of riding, now was the best time to stop; that she ought not to[28] overdo it, and that I was going to get out myself as soon as I had seen her off.

I saw her off.

Then after one ineffectual jab at the brake, I left the machine hurriedly, and as I sat down on the sposhy lawn I heard a tremendous but not unmusical sound of falling glass....

I tell Araminta that it isn’t the running of an automobile that is expensive. It is the stopping of it.

[29]

THE DECEPTION OF MARTHA TUCKER

AN AUTOMOBILE EXTRAVAGANZA

[30]

THE DECEPTION OF MARTHA TUCKER AN AUTOMOBILE EXTRAVAGANZA

It was not that Martha Tucker was particularly fond of horses so much as that she was afraid of automobiles of every sort, kind, or description. That was why she said that she would never consent to her husband’s purchasing a motor carriage.

“Horses were good enough for my father, and I guess that horses will do for me as long as I live and John is able to keep them,” said she to various friends on numerous occasions.

But if she was ridiculously old-fashioned in her notions, John was[32] not, and he cast about in his mind for some way to circumvent Martha without her knowing it. The thing would have been easy to do if it had not been for the fact that they were a very loving couple. John seldom went anywhere without taking his wife along, and as his business was of such a nature that he carried it on under his roof-tree, he was unable to speed along in happy loneliness on a locomobile or electric motor. Besides all this, John Tucker’s conscience was such a peculiar affair that if he hoodwinked Martha it must be in her sight.

The Tuckers always spent their summers at Arlinberg, the roads around which were famous for driving; and almost their only out-door[33] recreation, aside from wandering afoot in the fields, was found in riding behind any one or two of his half-dozen horses. The fact that he was abundantly able to maintain the most expensive automobile extant made it doubly hard for John to abstain from the use of one.

“I gave up smoking to please Martha when we first married, but I do not intend to give up the idea of running an automobile of my own, just because she has the old-fogy notions of the Hiltons in her blood. Her father never rode in a steam-car, although the road passed by his back door, and all the Hiltons are old-fogyish—which sums up their faults.”

John said this to an old school-mate[34] who was spending a Sunday at his house.

“Wouldn’t she try one of your neighbor’s automobiles, and see how she likes it?”

“No, sir; her no is a no. But I mean to ride in one with her sometime, if I have to blindfold her and tell her it’s a baby-carriage.”

It may have been a week after this conversation that John and Martha wandered in the woods picking wild flowers, and Mrs. Tucker was inoculated with ivy-poisoning that settled in her eyes, so that for several days she was confined to her room, and when she came out she was told by her doctor to wear smoked glasses for a week or two, her eyes still being inflamed and very painful. “Keep[35] outdoors; go riding as much as you can, but don’t take off the glasses until the inflammation has entirely subsided,” said he.

John was sincerely sorry for his wife’s misfortune, but when he heard that she would see through a glass darkly for the matter of a week or two, he made up his mind to act and act quickly.

They went out for a ride that he might test her vision. The horse he was driving was a gray, Roanoke by name.

“My dear,” said Mr. Tucker, “don’t you think that the gait of this black horse is very like that of Roanoke?”

“I’m sure I can’t tell,” said Martha. “With these dismal glasses on I’m not quite sure[36] whether it’s a horse or a cow in the harness. I get a hazy outline of some animal, but no color and little form. Don’t ever touch poison-ivy if you value your sight.”

“Well, the doctor says you’ll be all right in a week or two. By the way, Martha, I’m going to run down to New York to-morrow on business. I’ll be back in the evening. If your eyes were all right you might come along, but as it is, I guess you’d better not go down.”

“No; driving around with James will do me more good than a stuffy train. Come home as soon as you can, dear, and—” She hesitated. “I hate the old things, but if you are so set on trying one of those[37] automobiles, why don’t you do it to-morrow, when you are in New York?”

“Why, I believe I will, my dear. I wish I could overcome your prejudice against them.”

“But you can’t, dear, so don’t try.”

When Mr. Tucker reached New York, the first thing that he did was to visit an automobile repository.

“Would it be possible for you to let me have an automobile that could be operated from behind, so that my wife and I could sit in front and simply enjoy the ride?”

“Why, certainly,” said the man. “We have every style known to the most advanced makers.”

“And could I have shafts attached to it, so that if it broke down[38] I could call in the services of some horse?”

“But, sir, our machines never break down. That is why we are selling one every minute in the working-day. Our agents are located in every known city of the earth, and our factories are running day and night, and in spite of it we are falling behind in our orders in a rapidly increasing ratio.”

“Is that so?” said Mr. Tucker, turning to leave the store. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to go elsewhere, as I wanted one shipped to me to-morrow or next day. A birthday present for my wife, you understand.”

“Oh, I suppose,” said the wily salesman, “that I could let you in[39] ahead of your turn if the payment were cash.”

“Of course the payment will be cash. That’s the only way I ever pay.”

A half-hour from that time John Tucker was being propelled through New York’s busy streets in a smoothly running, almost noiseless, automobile worked from behind, and its way led down to a harness store in Chambers Street. As yet there were no shafts, but he had provided for a pair.

Mr. Tucker went into the harness-store. “Good-day,” said he. “I want to buy a wooden horse like the one out in front, only covered with horse-skin.”

“Well, sir,” said the clerk, “we don’t manufacture them ourselves[40] but we can order one for you. Going into the harness business?”