Mileage

“ So with many nouns. Jefferson used breadstuffs in his Report of the Secretary of State on Commercial Restrictions, December 16, 1793. Balance, in the sense of remainder, got into the debates of the First Congress. Mileage was used by Franklin in 1754, and is now sound English. Elevator, in the sense of a storage house for grain, was used by Jefferson and by others before him. Draw, for drawbridge, comes down from Revolutionary days. So does slip, in the sense of a berth for vessels. So does addition, in the sense of a suburb. ”

“ Mile after mile might one sit when roads were good, careful only to keep the pace at twelve miles an hour; by no means to alter the pull on the reins lest they should translate it into an order for full speed. With heads held high at the same angle, with legs rising from the ground at the same second of time, alike their extravagant action, their eager courage. ”

“ But the most wonderful increase in the locomotive power of man on land was obtained by the use of the modern cycle. One mile had been cycled at the rate of 27·1 miles per hour, fifty at twenty, one hundred at 16·6, three hundred and eighty-eight at 12·5, and nine hundred at 12·43 miles per hour. Unaided by mechanism man had shown himself able to swim for short distances at the rate of three, and long distances (twenty-two miles) at the rate of one mile per hour. ”

“ Whether the road be one mile or one hundred miles in length, the effect of diurnal rotation is the same; and, whether the road be long or short, the tendency to run off, as you cross a given parallel at a stated rate of speed, is the same; for the tendency to fly off the track is in proportion to the speed of the train, and not at all in proportion to the length of the road. ”

“ A mile stood on end ceases to be a mile and becomes a nightmare. Trail miles, or those that stretch across the mountain tops, are not even related to the miles of straight, smooth highway of the lower levels. ”

“ You seize the first motor-car at hand, and start off on the grand hunt after Bill. Through the crowded streets, out into the country highway, you fly at a terrific speed. Up the mountain passes you race, down precipitous slopes with every-increasing momentum. Every moment, it seems, will be your last. ”

“ Even a carriage journey on paper has some advantages, no dust, no discomfort of any kind; but we prefer the real thing, and enjoyed it so much we will change our mind and tell you a little about it. The places are all so familiar, and so near the “Hub” of the universe, that when you get to the end you may feel, as we did, as if you had not been anywhere after all. We did, however, drive four hundred miles, and had a very delightful time. ”

“ In making a mile with his heavy burden on his back, the perspiring coolie must often travel two miles, because the road-makers have made the highway a series of zigzags, the better to bewilder the spirits of the dead. ”

“ It might not be safe to go faster, but from any inconvenience one would suffer from fast riding, you might as well go a mile per minute.—Three miles from the termination of the track, the engine is disengaged and the cars drawn by horses—it ends on State street, a little below the State House. ”

“ All the way it is lined with trees, and it goes straight on, mile after mile, up hill and down—long, long hills that on the approach look as if they reached to the sky, but that flatten out when you get to them, and offer a grade so gradual and a surface so smooth that you need never shift your speed levers. Workmen are always raking and touching up those roads. ”

“ That the spectacle of an affable motorist
Bowling through a Surrey village
To the tune of six miles an hour
Shocks ther imagination,
And they believe for the rest of their natural lives
That the affable motorist aforesaid
Must have been travelling
At the rate of anything from 60 to 600 miles per minute.
Hence, my dear motorist,
It comes to pass that you are afforded so many opportunities
For airing your eloquence and the fatness of your purse
Before the police magistrates. ”

“ Never was adventure so completely at the command of average humanity. The home-bodies, who twenty years ago regarded a fifty, even a twenty-mile journey with dread, now roll away forty miles after supper to visit some sister, brother or friend. Actually, it is easier to drive an automobile five hundred miles than it used to be to drive a horse seventy-five miles. ”

“ We have a few data of the speed possible in travelling on extraordinary occasions. We select one of each kind—that of the mounted express and that of the Great Lady who kept her carriage, as the extremes, so far as regards the instruments of conveyance. For a horseman can go where a wheel-carriage cannot find a track: and on the other hand, the traveller on foot can generally choose a more direct line of movement, than is practicable for the four-footed servant of man, encumbered with his rider and his furniture. ”

“ Skilfully avoiding 199 an overturn as he rounded into the highway, he gave the spirited horses their heads, and fled toward town, carefully computing the speed the horses could make and still be able to return. Mile after mile he covered, passing teams, keeping ahead of automobiles and advertising panic. ”

“ A first-class hunter will go cross country occasionally at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. A first-class “roadster,” with a weight suitable for his strength, will do fifteen miles, and maintain the pace for an hour. In the latter days of the old mail coach, the four horses galloped nearly the whole of seven miles in about thirty-two minutes, but, as contractors used to say, ” the pace was killing.” ”

“ As it was, an automobilist journeys along the road—which is practically across the kingdom—his eyes glued to it, his heart in his mouth, and he bumps and slides over the wearying kilometres until he all but forgets the beauties of the Meuse now so far behind. Kilometre after kilometre of this vile road is paved with blocks of stone as big as one's head, half of which are out of place. And when one's automobile sinks into the holes one can but shudder. One hears of a road that is paved with good intentions. ”

“ I am fond of rapid driving, but sometimes it made me rather nervous to dash at the rate of eight miles an hour, within two feet of a precipice down which we looked upon the tops of trees a thousand feet below. There is, however, very little danger, as where the descent is steep, the driver can, in a moment, by putting his foot upon a spring at his side, cramp the wheel, and check our speed. ”

“ One hundred miles or less to be considered a day's work; over one hundred miles, at the same rate per mile.
Sec. 2. All freight engineers running four-wheel connected engines, four (4) cents per mile; six-wheel connected engines, four and three-tenths (4-3/10) cents per mile.
All freight firemen, firing four-wheel connected engines, two and four-tenths (2-4/10) cents per mile; six-wheel connected engines, two and six-tenths (2-6/10) cents per mile. One hundred miles or less to constitute a day's work. Over one hundred miles at the same rate per mile. ”

“ Finally, our advice is, in extended driving, keep to the main highway, with miles of woodsy driving every day, as fascinating as any Lovers’ Lane, with ponds and lakes innumerable, and occasional cascades so near that the roaring keeps one awake all night. ”

“ It is my opinion that nothing in the world is more enjoyable than an automobile roadside luncheon. [Pg 41] One does not need to lug a heavy basket mile after mile until a suitable place is found, and compromise at last because the flesh rebels. With a car, a mile, two miles, five miles, are matters of a few minutes. You run along leisurely until you reach the brook, the shade, the seclusion that invites you. ”

“ A never-ending carriage journey might become wearisome, but we have never had one long enough to satisfy us yet. As we drove through Brookline and crossed the invisible State line to Townsend, then to Fitchburg and Leominster, we summed up all the good things of our three week’s wanderings and concluded nothing was lacking. Perfect health, fine weather and three hundred and fifty miles’ driving among the hills! ”

“ If I am motoring and ask how far it is to my destination, I curse as an unmitigated booby the man who tells me it is three miles, and does not mention a six mile detour. It does me no good to be told that it is three miles if you walk. ”

“ We, in number 8, reach B just when number 1 reaches it. In other words, we accomplish two miles in fifteen seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving at the rate of a mile a minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to our journey, and has done its work in fifteen seconds. All the eight did their work at once, during the same fifteen seconds. Consequently we have been whizzed through the air at the somewhat startling speed of seven and a half seconds to the mile. ”

“ Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. ”

“ One soon grows to like it; we have ridden fifty miles on one in a single day, and many times we rode twenty-five or thirty miles, without any undue sense of fatigue. The secret is to pick out a car with a comfortably-padded back extending in a curve around the rear end of each seat. One can tuck oneself into this curve and swing happily along mile after mile.
The driver of a side-car is called a jarvey. ”

“ What do you suppose is the greatest weight you could draw by that Carriage, at the rate of ten miles an hour?—From forty to fifty hundred weight; it is found to be drawn much easier by dividing the weight into two Carriages than taking it in one only.
Do you work, on an average, at half your utmost power of working with safety to the Engine?—I should think we did. ”

“ In a very natural fury they ran, shouting, to the end of their breath, before they grasped the fact that the car must be a good mile ahead of them, and adding at least three hundred yards a minute to that distance. ”

“ The rate of travel on an average is five miles an hour; six is good; between seven and eight is the maximum, which sinks in hilly countries to three or four. I have made behind a good pair, in a light wagon, forty consecutive miles at the rate of nine per hour, and in California a mule is little thought of if it can not accomplish 250 miles in forty-eight hours. ”

“ A mile in four minutes is too fast, [67] and if you go a mile in three minutes and ten seconds you become liable for all consequences. [68] Even where a man was driving at only a smartish pace and ran over a donkey he had to pay for it. [69] But one may drive rapidly on an open country road where the chance of collision is slight.”
“Look out, Eldon!” cried my gentle spouse. ”

“ With her eyes intent on the road, intent on the spot a mile ahead where we are to be an instant later, and mine intent on her as she sits beside me, strong, alert, resourceful, we go at top speed, a mad pace, for miles and miles and miles, running away from the law and the world. ”

“ A mile had been galloped in one hundred and three seconds, equal to thirty-five miles per hour, and had been trotted in one hundred and twenty-four seconds, equal to twenty-nine miles per hour. How man's position as a competitor with other animals in speed was affected by his use of mechanical aids, but without any extraneous motive power, was considered in reference to locomotion on land, in water, and in air. ”

“ The principle on which the roads were mended was to spend a great number of months on one spot, improving a tract of two or three miles, and then to remove the men to a distance, it may be of twenty, leaving the improved bit as an oasis that allowed the driver of a dog-cart the luxury of half an hour's fast trotting. ”

“ The whole service is a marvel of excellence, and, considering its great steepness and length, the speed is wonderful—even down the steep mountain roads generally at a gallop pace, where oftener than once I found the drags almost at red heat. The journey by road is said to be 100 miles, and is accomplished in 14 hours, with as much punctuality as some English railway journeys are! ”

“ June 18th.—Fifteen paced miles in eight hours and forty-five minutes, including fifty minutes stops for angles. My own speed of three miles per hour (one-half mile in ten minutes) , then a five minute wait for the dogs, just made things even.
My brain is numb with the incessant ‘one, two, three’ of counting my paces all day long.
The travelling continuously very heavy. I have paced the entire fifteen miles, and the men (on snowshoes as usual) have walked beside their sledges. ”

“ The velocity attained of three and a half miles in three minutes may seem nothing to a locomotive engineer who is making up time; it might seem slow to a lover whose sweetheart was at the foot of the slide; to ordinary mortals a mile a minute is quite enough on such an incline. ”

“ There’s nothing very spectacular about a mile race. It is rather a test of endurance than of speed when compared to the middle distances and sprints, and as the time for the distance is likely to be somewhere around five minutes the pace is not fast enough to be inspiring to the spectators. ”

“ The mile of the guide-board was an elastic one, and sometimes a weary one.
Guide-boards, even poor ones, are still most welcome. No one in the country ever has any correct estimate of distances; a distance “a little better than three miles” before you usually increases by an extraordinary law instead of decreases after you have driven nearly a mile to “about four mile.” The next road-jogger says “nigh on to a mile”; and then you may be sure a few hundred feet farther on to jump back to a slow and wise rejoinder of the original distance, “hard on to four mile.”
[Pg 355]
The Watering Trough. ”

“ Experience shows that 10 English miles per day, measured along the road--or, what is much the same thing, 7 geographical miles, measured with a pair of compasses from point to point--is, taking one day with another, and including all stoppages of every kind, whatever be their cause,--very fast travelling for a caravan. In estimating the probable duration of a journey in an unknown country, or in arranging an outfit for an exploring expedition, not more than half that speed should be reckoned upon. ”