E. F. Benson

“ Pace, however, and the control of pace, and above all the sensuous consciousness of pace is at the root of it; and pleasure in pace is common to most people, whether it be in the form of a galloping horse, or the skate hissing over smooth ice, or the pace of a free-wheel bicycle humming down-hill, or, more impersonally, the pace of the smashed ball at lawn-tennis, the driven ball at golf, or the low boundary hit at cricket. ”

“ For the passion for motors is a taste—I had almost said a gift—as distinct and as keenly individual as the passion for music or mathematics. Those who use motors most (merely as a means of getting rapidly from it, one place to another) are often entirely without it, while those whom adverse circumstances (over which they have no control) compel to use them least may have it to supreme degree. To those who have it, analysis of their passion is perhaps superfluous ”

“ Foot by foot, it too is disappearing, and of the graveyard which surrounded it more than half is gone, so that from the face of the sandy cliff on which it stands there stick out like straws in glass, as Dante says, the bones of those who were once committed there to the kindly and stable earth. ”

“ Can’t we take it on the way to or from Hunstanton?”
“No; it’s thirty miles out of our way. Besides, to be at Bircham after dark means that we shouldn’t get back here till midnight. And as host to my guests——”
“Ah! things are only heard and seen after dark, are they?” I asked. “That makes it so much less interesting. It is like a séance where all lights are put out.” ”

“ But given that there are such things as spooks, and given that the death of the child and the death of Guy have caused spooks to play about there, it seems to me a very good point that different people should be aware of different phenomena. One hears the car, another sees it, one hears the child scream, another sees the child. ”

“ For the vast majority of mankind have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual world (which, I hold, is thick and populous around us) , sealed up, as it were; in other words, the majority of mankind never hear or see ghost, at all. ”

“ And, so said the chauffeur, there was something wrong with the monster’s spoon (ignition) , and he didn’t rightly know what, and therefore it seemed the prudent part not to go to Hunstanton (lunch, a thing of the preterite, having been the object) , but to the well-supplied King's Lynn. And we all breathed a pious hope that we might get there.
Whizz: hoot: purr! The last boot held, the spoon went busily to the monster's mouth, and we just flowed into King's Lynn. ”

“ While we waited we had tea in a hotel looking on to a big empty square of houses, and after tea we waited a very long time for our monster to pick us up. Then the telephone from the garage inquired for “the gentleman on the motor,” and since Harry had strolled out to get a local evening paper with news of the last Test Match, I applied ear and mouth to that elusive instrument. What I heard was not encouraging: the ignition had gone very wrong indeed, and “perhaps” in an hour we should be able to start. ”

“ They are a fretful strain of car; too thin, not enough bone—and bone is very good for the nerves. The brute liked running over a chicken or a rabbit, though perhaps it was less the car's ill-temper than Guy’s, poor chap. ”

“ Napoleon, I believe, said that the power of an army lay in its feet: that is true also of the monster. There was a loud bang, and in thirty seconds we were at a standstill. The monster’s off fore-foot troubled it, and the chauffeur said, “Yes, sir,—burst.”
So the burst boot was taken off and a new one put on, a boot that had never been on foot before. The foot in question was held up on a jack during this operation, and the new boot laced up with a pump. This took exactly twenty-five minutes. Then the monster got his spoon going again, and said, “Let me run: oh, let me run!” ”