Sweethearts at Home

by S. R. Crockett

I am sure that the "motoring-habit" is more poisonous and more injurious to the nations in this Year of Grace, 1911, than all the poisons that ever were "listed." It is the Indian hemp of the soul, which makes even good men mad. The earth may still belong to the Lord, though, standing afar off, I have sometimes my doubts. But of a certainty the roads between city and city, the creeper-hung village street where, generation after generation, children played, the quiet lanes where the old folk walked arm in arm, are now given over to the Minotaur whose name is "My Lord Teuf-Teuf."

Every day in all lands (called civilized) the journals are filled with a lengthening tale of victims—of the little child going to school, bag on back; the bairn playing with his soldiers in the dust; the deaf old lady walking along the lanes, so safe and quiet a few years ago. I can see her pattering about, looking for a few roses to grace her room—roses to dream over, roses to call back the good days now past for ever.

"HRRUMPH! HRRUMPH!" It is the trump of doom—behind her, unseen, to her unheard. And in the next number of the local paper there will be the briefest of paragraphs: "No blame attaches to the proprietor or to his excellent and competent chauffeur."

Sometimes, if one has the honor to be run over by the Highest of the High Born, they do inquire for you at the hospital, or even send a wreath for the coffin. For this one should even be content to die. And the paragraphs in the papers recording the gift quite make up to the mourners for their loss.

But even so, this is on the heights of motoring generosity. For at least noblesse does sometimes oblige. But the more recently and the more ignobly the Over-Slaughterman has been enriched, the more ignorant of all knowledge he is, the less he has seen of other lands, the fewer incursions he has made into the world of books and art, the less he possesses of that kindly natural consideration which the King-Gentleman shares with the Working-Gentleman—the more cruel and selfish he is when he gets himself upon the road, rushing along, disguised to the eyes, fakir-mad in a kind of devilish Juggernaut joy, to the holocaust of innumerable innocent victims.

"The police failed to obtain the number of the car which caused the accident."

Naturally! Excellent Under-Slaughterman, vulgarly called Chauffeur! Knows his business! He will ask for a rise next week and he will get it. That paragraph about the little girl trailed along for fifty yards under the rear wheels, with—Hold your tongue, you understand, Higgins—the details would not look well posted up in my club! Brave Under-Slaughterman! He winks an eye, as he has a right to do when he puts his latest-earned gratuity in his pocket.

But, halt there! I will do no man an injustice if I can help it. There are motorists and drivers of motor-cars who are noways "motor-fiends," who conduct a car as safely and carefully as in other times they would a pair of horses. I have friends among such. God keep them in life and the practice of "Unto others as I would that others should do unto me!"

But I grow old, at least in experience, and I fear for these my friends. Motoring as practiced in Great Britain to-day (and the northern continent is little better) is the direct and intentional abrogation of the Golden Rule. More, it is the only way in which a man, light-heartedly, taking no thought for the morrow, may kill his neighbor with impunity. In old times it was the pursuit of cent.-per-cent. which damned a man, and delivered him bound body and soul to Satan. We have changed all that. Now it is the pursuit of the mile-a-minute which sucks men's hearts empty of a generous feeling, which is the great open-air school for making iron-bound materialists out of human men—or rather animals fitted with deadly mechanical appliances worse than those of Mr. Wells's Martians.

I love my friends who are tied to these chariot wheels. But I fear for them. Temptation is great. Easy is the descent of Avernus, aided by a smart chauffeur, who wants to give you "the value of your money" in speed and the survival of the fittest: id est, of himself and you!