After giving them the once over I finally decided on one lean-looking bird, who seemed married, and quiet, and likely to teach me something about the insides of an auto, instead of asking me questions about the steps of the Teatime Tango Trot, and did I feel the same in my make-up?
Well, the first thing this bird asks me is do I know anything about a car? And I says, know what? And he says, well, can I name the parts of a car? And I says, yes; and he says for me to name them. So I says color, lining, flower holder, clock, speaking tube and chauffeur.
Well, the bird says so far correct; but that wasn't enough, and he guessed we better begin at the more fundamental parts and would I just step inside?
Well, it seems this auto school undertakes to teach you everything about a car from the paint on the body to the appendix, or magneto, as it is called, in twenty lessons; which is like trying to teach the Teatime Tango Trot, with three hand-springs and twenty whirls round your partner's neck, by mail for five dollars. Which is to say it can't be done.
First off, the instructor hands you a bunch of yellow papers with a lot of typewriting on them—twenty sheets in all, or one per lesson, and all you got to do is learn them good and then put into practice what you learn; and after that what you can't do to a car would fill a book!
Well, after you grab this sheaf of stage bank notes you look at number one and follow the bird that's teaching you round the room while he reels it off. I guess the idea of you holding the paper is to check him up if he makes a mistake. Anyways, this bird let me in among a flock of busted-looking pieces of machinery and begun talking fast. At first, I didn't get him at all; but when I got sort of used to it I realized he was saying something like this:
"The crank shaft is a steel drop-forging having arms extending from center of shaft according to number of cylinders. It is used to change the reciprocating movement of the piston into a rotary motion of the flywheel; it has a starting handle at one end and the flywheel at the other, as you observe. We will now pass on to the exhaust manifold, which is generally constructed of cast iron; it conducts the burned gases from the exhaust valve . . ."
"Hold on!" I says. "Exhaust is right! I'm exhausted this minute. If you don't mind I'd like to sit down and talk sense, instead of listening to a phonograph monologue in a foreign language."
The instructor bird seemed sort of winded by this; but he got a couple of chairs and pretty soon we was sitting in a quiet corner talking like we'd both been on the same circuit for five years.
"Now listen here, brother," I says real earnest; "I want to learn this stuff, and learn it right! And I want you to stick by me and see me through, same as you would any male man that come in here to learn to be a chauffeur. Now take it easy and make me get it, and I'll play square and do my best to understand, without no nonsense."