The day we were expected at a friend's summer home at the sea-side we spent with the Shakers in the valley of Lebanon, waiting for a new steering-head. Telegrams of inquiry, concern, and consolation reached us in our retreat, but those who expected us were none the less inconvenienced.
Then, too, what business have the dusty, grimy, veiled, goggled, and leathered party from the machine among the muslin gowns, smart wraps, and immaculate coverings of the conventional house party; if we but approach, they scatter in self-protection.
From these reflections it is only too plain that the automobile —like that other inartistic instrument of torture, the grand piano —is not adapted to the drawing-room. It is not quite at home in the stable; it demands a house of its own. If the friend who invites you to visit him has a machine, then accept, for he is a brother crank; but if he has none, do not fill his generous soul with dismay by running up his drive-way, sprinkling its spotless white with oil, leaving an ineradicable stain under the porte-cochere, and frightening his favorite horses into fits as you run into the stable.
But it is delightful to go through cities and out-of-the-way places, just leaving cards in a most casual manner upon people one knows. We passed through many places twice, some places three times, in careering about. Each time we called on friends; sometimes they were in, sometimes out; it was all so casual,—a cup of tea, a little chat, sometimes without shutting down the motor,—the briefest of calls, all the more charming because brief,—really, it was strange.
We see a town ahead; calling to a man by the roadside,—
"What place is that?"
"L—" is the long drawn shout as we go flying by.
"Why, the S___s live there. I have not seen her since we were at school. I would like to stop."
"Well, just for a moment."
In a trice the machine is at the door; Mrs. S___ is out—will return in a moment; so sorry, cannot wait, leave cards; call again some other day; and we turn ten or fifteen or twenty miles to one side to see another old school-friend for five or ten minutes —just long enough for the chauffeur to oil-up while the school-mates chat.