(1) Monday.--I buy a beautiful steam motor-car. Am photographed. (2) Tuesday.--I take it out. Pull the wrong lever, and back into a shop window. A bad start. (3) Wednesday morning.--A few things I ran over. (4) Wednesday afternoon.--Took too sharp a turn. Narrowly escaped knocking down policeman at the corner. Ran over both his feet. (5) Thursday morning.--Got stuck in a ditch four miles from home. (6) Thursday evening.--Arrive home. Back the car into the shed. Miss the door and knock the shed down. (7) Friday.--Ran over my neighbour's dog. (8) Saturday.--Silly car breaks down three miles from home. Hire a horse to tow it back. (9) Sunday.--Filling up. Petrol tank caught fire. Wretched thing burnt. Thank goodness! * * * Illustration: MY STEAM MOTOR-CAR * * * * * MODERN ROMANCE OF THE ROAD ["It is said that the perpetrators of a recent burglary got clear away with their booty by the help of an automobile. At this rate we may expect to be attacked, ere long, by automobilist highwaymen."--_Paris Correspondent of Daily Paper._] It was midnight. The wind howled drearily over the lonely heath; the moon shone fitfully through the driving clouds. By its gleam an observer might have noted a solitary automobile painfully jolting along the rough road that lay across the common. Its speed, as carefully noted by an intelligent constable half-an-hour earlier, was 41.275 miles an hour. To the ordinary observer it would appear somewhat less. Two figures might have been descried on the machine; the one the gallant Hubert de Fitztompkyns, the other Lady Clarabella, his young and lovely bride. Clarabella shivered, and drew her sables more closely around her. "I am frightened," she murmured. "It is so dark and cold, Hubert, and this is a well-known place for highwaymen! Suppose we should be attacked?" "Pooh!" replied her husband, deftly manipulating the oil-can. "Who should attack us when 'tis common talk that you pawned your diamonds a month ago? Besides, we have a swivel-mounted Maxim on our machine. Ill would it fare with the rogue who--Heavens! what was that?" From the far distance sounded a weird, unearthly noise, growing clearer and louder even as Hubert and his wife listened. It was the whistle of another automobile! In a moment Hubert had turned on the acetylene search-light, and gazed with straining eyes down the road behind him. Then he turned to his wife. "'Tis Cutthroat giving us chase," he said simply. "Pass the cordite cartridges, please." Lady Clarabella grew deathly pale. "I don't know where they are!" she gasped. "I think--I think I must have left them on my dressing-table." "Then we are lost. Cutthroat is mounted on his bony Black Jet, which covers a mile a minute--and he is the most blood-thirsty ruffian on the road. Shut off steam, Clarabella! We can but yield."