To explain that we are not crossing the continent as a feat of endurance is useless; having started to motor to the West, our stopping this side of the place we set out for is to them incomprehensible.
“Why, that car ought to go through anything!” is all any of them can think of saying to us.
Our friend the fire chief stood glowering out in front of the garage all morning. I think he would have gone to great lengths to prevent our machine’s incarceration in a freight car. The proprietor of the garage gave us his opinion: “Of course we drive pretty light machines around here, and yours is heavy and your wheels are uncommon narrow, but that engine of yours sure ain’t no toy! I’d go through if I was you! I wouldn’t quit for a little mud! No, sir!”
“And only a little mud at that!” scornfully echoed the fire chief.
“And supposing we slide off one of those bridges, or turn turtle in a ditch?” asked we.
The chief scratched his head, but his determination was undaunted. “She’d be kind of heavy to fall on you,” he grinned. “All the same, if that car was mine, I’d go right on plumb across Hell itself, I would!”
To finish what you have begun, to see it through at whatever cost, that seems to be the spirit here; it is probably the spirit of the West, the spirit that has doubled and trebled these towns in a few years. The consideration as to whether it is the wisest and most expedient thing to do, has no part in their process of reasoning. That is exactly the point.
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs but to do and die.