“Come into some cheap lunch-place, and I’ll blow myself off to a meal and give you the particulars.” So it came to pass that we were soon seated in a restaurant which, if cheap, is clean--a combination rarer than need be. “You’ve probably noticed that the more automobiles there are in use, the more breakdowns there are.” I could but admit that it was so. “Well, what is more useless than a broken-down motor-wagon?” I would have suggested “Two,” but Bindley hates warmed-up jokes, so I refrained and told him that I gave it up. “It isn’t a conundrum,” said he, irritably. “Nothing in the world is more useless than a broken-down motor. There are some vehicles of a box-like pattern that can be used as hen-houses when they have outlived their initial usefulness, but who wants a hen-house on Fifth Avenue, corner of Twenty-fifth Street, or any other place where a motor vehicle gives out? The more I thought this over, the more I felt that something was needed to make a disabled automobile of some use, and I saw that the man who would supply that something could make money hand over fist. So I devoted a great deal of time to the subject, and at last I hit it. Horses.” “Horses what?” said I. [Illustration] “Why, horses to supply the motive power. Horses are getting to be a drug in the market, and can be bought dirt-cheap. That being the case, I am going to interest capitalists in the scheme, and then we will buy up a lot of horses and distribute them at different points in the city. Then, when a man is out in his automobile and breaks down, he will telephone to the nearest station and get a horse. This can easily be hitched to the motor by a contrivance that I intend to patent, and then the horse can drag the wagon to the nearest power-house, where it can be restocked with electricity, or gas, or naphtha, or whatever is wanted. Isn’t it a great scheme? Why, sir, I can see in the future the plan enlarged so that people will always take a horse along with them when they go a-motoring, and, if anything happens, there they are with the good old horse handy. Talk about the horseless age! Why, horses are just entering upon a new sphere of usefulness.” I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on: “I tell you that if I can get the holders of automobile stock to coöperate with me I’ll stop eating at places like this.” A look of such sweet content overspread his features that I told him to put me down for ten shares as soon as his company was organized. That was a month ago, and I haven’t gotten my stock yet. But motors are becoming stalled every day. XV A CALCULATING BORE My friend Bings is one of those habitual calculators--one of the kind that says if all the teeth that have been extracted since the first dentist began business were to be used for paving purposes in Hades, the good-resolutions contractor would be out of a job for ten thousand years. He thinks in numbers, and if he were a minister he would get all his texts from the same source.