The Adventures of a Suburbanite

by Ellis Parker Butler

I suppose if I had come home and said to Isobel: “My dear, I have bought an Asiatic hyena,” she would have been less shocked and surprised than she was when I entered the house and said: “Well, my dear, I have bought an automobile.”

Isobel is of a rather nervous disposition, and driving behind Bob, our horse, had tended to eliminate any latent speed mania she may have ever had, for Bob is not a rapid horse. Of course, Isobel drove the horse at a trot occasionally, but that was when she wanted to go slower than a walk, for Bob was what may be called an upright trotter—one of those horses that trot like a grasshopper: the harder they trot the higher they rise in the air, and the less ground they cover. When Bob was in fine fettle, as we horsemen say, he could trot for hours with a perpendicular motion, like a sewing machine needle, and remain in one identical spot the whole time. He could trot tied to a post. Sometimes when he was feeling his oats he could trot backward.

I suppose that when I mentioned automobile Isobel had a vision of a bright-red car about twenty-five feet long, with a tonnage like an ocean steamer, and a speed of one hundred and ten miles an hour—one of the machines that flash by with a wail of agony and kill a couple of men just around the next corner. But Millington's automobile was not that kind. It was a tried and tested affair. It had been in a Christian family for five years, and was well broken. Nor was it a long automobile; it was one of the shortest automobiles I have ever seen; indeed, I do not think I ever saw such a short automobile. “Short and high” seemed to have been the maker's motto, and he had lived up to it. He couldn't have made the automobile any shorter without having cogs on the tires, so they could overlap. If the automobile had been much shorter the rear wheels would have been in front of the fore wheels. But what it lacked in length it made up in altitude. It averaged pretty well, multiplying the height by the length. It was the type known in the profession as the “camel type.” When in action it had a motion somewhat like a camel, too, but more like a small boat on a wintry, wind-tossed sea. But, ah! the engine! There was a noble heart in that weak body! When the engine was in average knocking condition, one knew when it started. In two minutes after the engine started the driver was on the ground; if he did not become dizzy, sitting at such a height, and fall off, the engine shook him off.

But, if Isobel did not take kindly to the idea of owning Millington's automobile, Rolfs seemed glad I was going to buy it.

“You won't be everlastingly asking me to take a little run up to Port Lafayette,” he said. “For years before you moved out here Millington bothered the life out of me, and I cannot bear riding in automobiles. I hate them worse than that hired man of yours does. How does he like the idea?”

I told him, rather haughtily, that I did not usually consult Mr. Prawley when I bought automobiles. Then Rolfs said he thought, usually, it was just as well for an ignorant man to consult some one, but that he knew Millington's automobile was a good one. He said he knew the man that had owned the machine ten or twelve years before Millington bought it. He said that every one knew that machines of that make that were made in 1895 were extremely durable. He said he remembered about this one particularly, because it was the period when milk shakes were the popular drink, and his friend used to make his own. He said his friend would put the ingredients in a bottle, and tie the bottle to the automobile seat, and then start the engine for a minute or two, and the milk would be completely shaken. So would his friend.

Rolfs asked me to let him know when I brought the automobile over from Millington's. I had no difficulty in doing so. When I ran that automobile the only difficulty was in concealing the fact that it was arriving anywhere and in getting it to arrive. Often it preferred not to arrive at all, but when it did arrive, it gave every one notice. Isobel never had to wonder whether I was arriving in my machine, or whether it was some visitor in another machine. Under my regime my machine had a sweet, purring sound like a road-roller loaded with scrap iron crossing a cobblestone bridge. When the engine was going and the car was not, it sounded like giant fire-crackers exploding under a dish pan.

The very day I purchased the car and brought it into my yard Mr. Prawley came to me and told me he had a very important communication to make. He said his poor old mother was sick, and he would like a month's vacation. He added that he imagined the automobile would last about twenty-nine days. As he said this his lean, villainous face wore a look of fear, and when I told him he could have the vacation, he departed, walking backward, keeping one eye on the automobile all the while.

But the automobile did not behave in the bewitched manner for me that it had for Millington. It did not repair itself over night at all. If anything it deteriorated.

Oddly enough, now that the automobile was quite tame, Isobel, who usually has perfect confidence in me, declined to ride in it. But frequently we took rides together, driving side by side, she in her buggy behind Bob, and I in my automobile, and, occasionally, when the road was rough and the engine working well, I would drop in on her unexpectedly. But not always. Sometimes I fell off on the other side.