Let us pause for a minute or two to follow the roads by which one living in Braintree might travel by car to London, every day if need be, remembering that this mode of living and travelling up and down to business is working a gradual revolution in the social habits of Englishmen. That revolution will cease to be gradual and will become rapid when the danger of a burst or punctured tire becomes, as it surely will become soon, a thing of the past. It has become more rapid of quite recent years owing to the marked increase of the trustworthiness of cars. And here, even at the risk of giving a free advertisement, nothing shall deter me from specific recommendation of a device which unquestionably has solved the tire problem, if the users of motor-cars for ordinary purposes, that is to say the persons who are content with thirty miles an hour or so, had but the sense to adopt it generally. That device is the Middleton Pneumatic Hub, in which I have no interest direct or indirect, the owners of which are merely acquaintances, no more. I have tried it, and sundry other mechanical devices over very rough roads. Of it alone among substitutes is the statement possible that, if one had not known beforehand, the absence of pneumatic tires would not have been noticed. It passed through a four-thousand-mile club trial at an expense of ten shillings and sixpence in repairs. The judges made also sundry observations, more or less critical, of no interest to me because I had made my own trial on the question of comfort, and my impressions were clear. Finally I write thus boldly because I know the difficulties which the Middleton Hub has to fight to be entirely distinct from its structure or from any defects which it may possess. So long as persons who sell motor-cars are interested in pneumatic tires, or persons who sell the latter are possessed of substantial influence over those who sell or make the former, it is simply idle to hope that the seller of a car will always give disinterested advice to the buyer who, in these still infant days of motoring, is more often than not a mere novice, if even that. Again let me say, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_; the advice to adopt the Middleton Hub and to acquire a mind free from apprehension of puncture or burst, without any loss of personal comfort, is given because it is needed. An alternative is the Stepney wheel, which is capable of being adjusted in a very short time in case of tire trouble. Of this I cannot speak from personal trial, but amateur friends testify that it adds immensely to the traveller's peace of mind. One thing, at least, is certain. He who trusts to pneumatic tires when he is on an important journey must always allow a margin of time unless he is to be liable to sudden disappointment and, perhaps, to grave inconvenience and loss of time.