“I’m pretty swift,” he said, with the same glance that a collie will give you at times—a gay, innocent light of the eyes!
A little while later Franklin was saying to me that he had no real complaint against Speed except this: “If you drive up to the St. Regis and go in for half an hour, when you come out the sidewalk is all covered with tools and the engine dismantled—that is, if the police have not interfered.”
“Just the same,” put in Fred Booth, “he is one of the chauffeurs who led the procession of cars from New York over the Alleghanies and Rockies to the coast, laying out the Lincoln Highway.” (Afterwards I saw testimonials and autographed plates which proved this.) “He can take a car anywhere she’ll go.”
Then I proceeded to the great automobile club for information.
“Are you a member?” asked the smug attendant, a polite, airy, bufferish character.
“No, only the temporary possessor of a car for a tour.”
“Then we can do nothing for you. Only members are provided with information.”
On the table by which I was standing lay an automobile monthly. In its pages, which I had been idly thumbing as I waited, were a dozen maps of tours, those deceptive things gotten up by associated roadhouses and hotels in their own interest. One was labeled “The Scenic Route,” and showed a broad black line extending from New York via the Water Gap, Stroudsburg, Wilkes-Barré, Scranton, Binghamton, and a place called Watkins Glen, to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. This interested me. These places are in the heart of the Alleghanies and of the anthracite coal region. Visions of green hills, deep valleys, winding rivers, glistering cataracts and the like leaped before my mind.
“The Scenic Route!” I ventured. “Here’s a map that seems to cover what I want. What number is this?”
“Take it, take it!” replied the lofty attendant, as if to shoo me out of the place. “You are welcome.”