Car

“ Think of the English roads and lanes, of the pretty girls and decent men one meets on horseback or in smart dogcarts, the dowagers in victorias, the crowds of cyclists, the occasional fine motor-car, knickerbockered men walking for the pleasure of exercise! Here, though one knows there are more motors than at home, one rarely comes across them out of towns; and as for ladies and gentlemen, or, indeed, any sort of people out solely for enjoyment, they're as rare as black opals. ”

“ Round that car there really is a light of romance and of adventure, a glamour that isn't at all the glamour of his opulence. In those days he did look upon a motor-car mainly as an instrument of pleasure, and not as a vulgar advertisement of his income. ”

“ We have just finished a trip of a couple of hundred miles through southern England in a motor car. In France and the United States it is an automobile, but in Great Britain it is a motor car. This is a better way to see the country than from a railroad train, and not so good as walking. If you have a motor car or have a friend who has one, that is the best way to travel. If you have none and no prospect, a motor car is a delusion and a mistake. ”

“ The bush through which they travelled did not interest him; a motor-car was, in his view, a means of moving swiftly through space, and to crawl along a mountain track at the pace of a bullock-waggon failed to appeal to him in the least. ”

“ The car, he saw with the experienced eye of a connoisseur, was a recent model of one of the most expensive and popular foreign makes: built on lines that promised a deal in the way of speed, and furnished with engines that were pregnant with multiplied horse-power: all in all not the style of car one would expect to find controlled by a solitary woman, especially after ten of a summer's night. ”

“ Of course you take first class cars, balanced on extra steel springs, where, stretched on a rose-wood sofa, carved à la Renaissance, with a large looking-glass before you, and an elegant table between, you may either read, take notes, take a collation or enjoy an agreeable tête-à-tête, as taste or opportunity may prompt you. These cars are never crowded, and you are in them as in a lady’s boudoir, treading softly on the carpet. ”

“ Seeing beautiful things when you travel by rail consists mostly on getting half a glimpse, beginning to exclaim, "Oh, look there!" then plunging into the black gulf of a tunnel, and not coming out again until after the best bit has carefully disappeared behind an uninteresting, fat-bodied mountain. But travelling by motor-car! Oh, the difference! One sees, one feels; one is never, never bored, or impatient to arrive anywhere. ”

“ The car is so singularly intelligent that you feel it is a friend, too kind-hearted and chivalrous a creature to let anything bad happen. Of course, about every ten minutes something almost happens, but that is invariably the fault of other people's cars. You dash up to the mouth of a cross-road which you couldn't possibly have seen, because it is subtly disguised as a clump of trees or a flowery knoll; and you discover its true identity only because another motor—a blundering brute of a motor—bursts out at fifty miles an hour in front of your nose. ”

“ Fancy Aunt Mary and me lolling luxuriously (I love that word "lolling") in a snow-white car with scarlet cushions, all the brass-work gleaming like a fireman's helmet—the rakiest, smartest car imaginable! There are two seats in front and a roomy tonneau behind. The steering and other arrangements are quite different from those in the poor dead Dragon—rest its wicked soul! There's a steering-wheel, and below it two ducky little handles that do everything. One's the "advance sparking lever," the other the "mixture lever." ”

“ Perhaps the windows aren't really crystal, but they were all bevelly and glittering in the sunshine, and seemed to run round the car from back to front, giving the effect of a Cinderella Coach fitted on to a motor. Never was paint so blue, never was crest on carriage panel so large and so like a vague, over-ripe tomato. Never was a chauffeur so long, so slim, so smart, so leathery. ”

“ Dad, we drove in the automobile along the Appian Way. It sounds shocking, but it wasn't; it was glorious. There is never anything jarring (I don't mean that for a pun) about going into the midst of old and wonderful things on a motor-car, for it is wonderful too, and it has a dignity of its own-the dignity of fine and perfect mechanism which seems alive, like a splendid Pegasus or an obedient unicorn, or some other strange legendary animal which you are obliged to respect and marvel at. ”

“ Then go both of you to the car”— (here he addressed himself especially to Jack) —“the car, I mean, in which you rode yesterday; start at once; lose no time, there is none to lose, for if you are pursued at all, you will be pursued before daylight. I will see that the car is well stored with food and provided with a spare battery and with glasses and light.” ”

“ As the crop of motor cars this year is unusually heavy, I seldom move abroad without moments of excitement, and the things I say under my breath remind people who go out with me of the odour that a motor car leaves trailing behind it. ”

“ The automobile, a bicycle, or a gentle plodding burro will make the trip more enjoyable than is otherwise conceivable, even though the striking beauties which one sees from the slow-running little train give one a glimmer of satisfaction. Seventy-five kilometres, scarce fifty miles! It is nothing to an automobile, not much more to a bicycle, and only a two-days’ jaunt for a sure-footed little donkey, which you may hire anywhere in these parts for ten francs a day, including his keeper. ”

“ With the body of the car again the dwelling-place of darkness, objects beyond its rain-gemmed glass—the heads of the Chinese maid and chauffeur, the twin piers of the nearing gateway—attained dense relief against the blue-white glare of two broad headlight beams, that of the limousine boring through the gateway to intersect at right angles that of another car approaching on the highroad but as yet hidden by the wall of the park. ”

“ 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 seen neither reading nor card-playing going on in any automobile. [Pg 1826]
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. ”

“ Whether the Car shall jerk or sweetly run,
The Wine of Life is in a Motor Trip,
(Though all the Parts keep breaking One by One!)
Why, if the Soul can know this Glorious Game,
All other Stunts seem dry and dull and tame ”

“ What would Madame de Sévigné, or Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or George Sand have said if a blue car like ours had suddenly flashed into their vision? We agreed that, in any case, not one of them—or any other person of true imagination—would call abominable a wonderful piece of mechanism with the power of flattening mountains into plains, triumphing over space, annihilating distance; a machine combining fiercest energy with the mildest docility. ”

“ And suddenly, as the racing engine of an automobile caught his ear, he broke into a run, and dashed around the corner after them—in time to see them jump into a car, and the car speed off along the street! ”

“ Swinging smoothly round curve after curve, the noble car running free and cooing in sheer joy of fiery life, as she swooped from height to depth, I, too, felt the joy of life as I had hardly ever felt it before. The chauffeur and I did not speak often, but I looked up at him sometimes because of the pleasure I had in seeing and re-seeing the face in which I had come to have perfect confidence ”

“ It was so dusty that Mamma, Maida, and I put on the motor-veils we had discarded after the first few hours of the trip till now; things made of pongee silk, with windows of talc over our eyes and little lace doors for our breath to pass through. It was fun when we would slacken speed in some town or village, to see how the young Italians tried to pry into the motor-masks' secrets and find out if we were pretty. ”

“ Down got I also, to relieve the car of my weight during the weird process of "jacking up," though the chauffeur assured me that I didn't matter any more than a fly on the wheel. Our birds of paradise remained in their cage, however, Lady Turnour glaring whenever she caught a glimpse of the chauffeur's head, as if he had bitten that hole in the tyre. But before us loomed mountains—disagreeable-looking mountains—more like embonpoints growing out of the earth's surface than ornamental elevations. ”

“ He rides out on a triumphal car or great waggon, richly gilded all over, and of great height, covered by a splendid canopy, and drawn by sixteen horses, richly caparisoned. Behind the car walk twenty of his nobles or chief officers, each of whom holds the end of a rope, the other end being fastened to the car to keep it upright and prevent it from falling over. ”

“ There is another kind, called the inside car. An Irishman once explained the difference to an English traveller, in this way: "An outside car, yer honor, has the wheels inside, and an inside car has the wheels outside." ”

“ The automobile, by inducing people to get more into the open air, may be considered to be a prophylactic, and something that will bring them into that universally good condition. The forgetting of business, the obliteration of household cares, the unstringing of high-tensioned nerves by a swift run like a swallow in its flight over smooth and undulating roads brings rest with relaxation, and cure with comfort. ”

“ Next to the racing car comes the touring car, engined to give sixty miles an hour on the level in the more powerful types, or a much lower speed in the car intended for quieter travel, and for people who are not prepared to face a big bill for upkeep. The luxury of the age has invaded the design of automobiles till the gorgeously [131] decorated and comfortably furnished Pullman of the railway has found a counterpart in the motor caravan with its accommodation for sleeping and feeding. ”

“ A private car, though many books have been written in it, is hardly the best place from which to study a country, unless it happen that you have kept house and seen the seasons round under normal conditions on the same continent. Then you know how the cars look from the houses; which is not in the least as the houses look from the cars. Then, the very porter's brush in its nickel clip, the long cathedral-like aisle between the well-known green seats, the toll of the bell and the deep organ-like note of the engine wake up memories ”

“ I am pretty sure that never before has a motor-car climbed that winding road, and I think the whole population turned out and ran at our heels as we drove slowly through the sombre, wind-swept, eagle-eyrie of a town. As it happened, the day was overcast, and scudding clouds drifted coldly across the mountain-top, showing us the reason for the great blue hoods that the men wear over their heads, their Saracenic faces peering out as from a cave. ”

“ I staggered out-of-doors again, and fell into the car, whose ever-running machinery masked my yelps and hiccups. When I raised my forehead from the wheel, I saw that traffic through the village had been resumed, after, as my watch showed, one and one-half hour's suspension. There were two limousines, one landau, one doctor's car, three touring-cars, one patent steam-laundry van, three tricars, one traction-engine, some motor-cycles, one with a side-car, and one brewery lorry. ”

“ The car really is a beauty. You can put a big trunk on behind, and there are places for tools and books and lunch, and no end of little things, in a box under the cushions we sit on, and even under the floor. ”

“ I have made it a rule never to allow any one to drive my own little car—and this is a rule that every one will find useful. All cars have their individual idiosyncrasies, and if you alone drive, you get to understand every sound; but if you allow any one to drive you are ignorant of what strain the car has been put to. ”

“ All that your sense organs furnish is a more or less blurred patch of black of certain size and contour, one or more objects of somewhat different color whom you know to be passengers, and various sounds of a whizzing, chugging or roaring nature. Your former experience with automobiles enables you to associate with these meager sensory details the upholstered seats, the whirling wheels, the swaying movement and whatever else belongs to the full meaning of a motor car. ”

“ There were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing beasts, and ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in the middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice water on the tracks; ventilated fruit- and milk-cars; flat-cars with truck-wagons full of market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat-cars piled high with strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles ”

“ I could imagine that more than half the fun of owning a motor car would lie in understanding the thing inside and out; and I said so.
"It's a little like controlling the elements," Jack answered. "Think of the difference in this machine, when it's asleep—cold and quiet, an engine mounted on a frame, a tank of water, a reservoir of cheap spirit, a pump, a radiator, a magnet, some geared wheels fitting together, a lever or two. My man twists a handle. On the instant the machine leaps into frenzied life. ”