THE DECEPTION OF MARTHA TUCKER 29 WHILE THE AUTOMOBILE RAN DOWN 59 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Thornton, gesticulating wildly, disappeared around the corner _Frontispiece_ “Young man, experience teaches more in half an hour than books or precepts do in a year” 14 She approached the horse’s head to pet him 44 He dropped upon his bed, feeling white about the gills 88 ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE 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. 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 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.