There was no landing, and it seemed impossible for our vehicle to get aboard; but the boat had a long shovel-like nose projecting from the bow which ran upon the shore, making a perfect gang-plank.
Carefully balancing the automobile in the centre so as not to list the primitive craft, we made our way deliberately to the other side, the entire crew of two men—engineer and captain—coming out to talk with us.
The ferries at Lyme and New London would prove great obstacles to anything like a club from New York to Newport along this road; the day would be spent in getting machines across the two rivers.
It was dark when we ran into the city. This particular visit to New Haven is chiefly memorable for the exceeding good manners of a boy of ten, who watched the machine next morning as it was prepared for the day's ride, offered to act as guide to the place where gasoline was kept, and, with the grace of a Chesterfield, made good my delinquent purse by paying the bill. It was all charmingly and not precociously done. This little man was well brought up,—so well brought up that he did not know it.
The automobile is a pretty fair touchstone to manners for both young and old. A man is himself in the presence of the unexpected. The automobile is so strange that it carries people off their equilibrium, and they say and do things impulsively, and therefore naturally.
The odd-looking stranger is ever treated with scant courtesy and unbecoming curiosity; the strange machine fares no better. The man or the boy who is not unduly curious, not unduly aggressive, not unduly loquacious, not unduly insistent, who preserves his poise in the presence of an automobile, is quite out of the ordinary,— my little New Haven friend was of that sort.
It is a beautiful ride from New Haven to New York, and to it we devoted the entire day, from half-past eight until half-past seven.
At Norwalk the people were celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the town; the hotel where we dined may have antedated the town a century or two.
Later in the afternoon, while wheeling along at twenty miles an hour, we caught a glimpse of a signpost pointing to the left and reading, "To Sound Beach." The name reminded us of friends who were spending a few weeks there; we turned back and made them a flying call.
Again a little farther on we stopped for gasoline in a dilapidated little village, and found it was Mianus, which we recalled as the home of an artist whose paintings, full of charm and tender sentiment, have spread the fame of the locality and river. It was only a short run of two or three miles to the orchard and hill where he has his summer home, and we renewed an acquaintance made several years before.