But although Nether Stowey is tolerant of all these things, it is not calm when motor-cars are under discussion. It would raise licences to £50 per annum, reduce speed to ten miles an hour on the open roads and three miles in villages and towns, and both heavily fine and award long terms of imprisonment to any who transgressed these suggested limits. Also, Nether Stowey suggests the reintroduction of turnpike-gates; or, to speak by the card, “tarnpayke-geäts.” By all this, it will be perceived that automobiles have become a nuisance, a terror, and a source of injury to Nether Stowey; as they have to countless other villages similarly circumstanced.
THE MOTOR TERROR
Upon the pleasant country road
The motor-lorry runs;
Its build is huge and clumsy, and
It weighs some seven tons.
And when its cylinder backfires,
It sounds like gatling-guns!
Hark! down the village street there comes
The motor “charry bong”: