The Rabbit mutely turned away
From language so unfair;
He trotted home, and from that day
He shunned the lazy Hare.
'For this,' said he, 'is plain to me,
All lazy folk are prone
To blame their friends, and never see
The fault is theirs alone.'
A MOTOR-CAR OF THE PAST.
Motorists have cause to be thankful they live in a good-natured age. Of course, they are often blamed for accidents, not always deservedly; but had they lived in the early part of the nineteenth century, they would have been much worse off. About that time, several persons constructed steam carriages, meant to run upon ordinary roads; the popular anger, however, was so great that they had to give up running them. Nearly every town and village greeted them with jeers and hostile cries, with occasional presents of brickbats or stones, and it happened more than once that a furious mob attacked a party, and tried to break the machine to pieces.
Mr. Gurney was a notable contriver of such carriages. He had several, of different styles, and probably the most remarkable of his experiments was the making of one with a divided boiler, to relieve the fears which were common then amongst people to whom steam was a novelty, and who fancied that a boiler was in great danger of bursting from the pressure of the steam. Some folk said that Mr. Gurney, who was a doctor, took the idea of his peculiar boiler from the arteries and veins of the human body; at any rate, he had a double arrangement of pipes, taking the form of a horseshoe, and made of welded iron. There were forty pipes, so that if one burst it could only do a trifling amount of harm, and the damage was easily repaired. The principle was that of the 'water-tube' boilers of the present day. Mr. Gurney had also what he called 'separators,' which returned to the boiler any water that was not needed in the pipes. A tank supplied water to the boiler by means of a pump with a flexible hose; coke or charcoal was burnt in the furnace, so that there was very little smoke, and the machinery moved almost noiselessly. It was reckoned to be about twelve horse-power, and travelled at any rate between four and fifteen miles an hour. Inside and outside the vehicle eighteen or twenty persons could be seated; the guide or conductor sat in front, and steered the machine by pilot-wheels fastened to a pole, which went from end to end of the carriage. He had also under his management a lever which would stop the carriage speedily, and another to reverse the action of the wheels. The tank, containing about sixty gallons, and the furnace were placed in what they called the hind boot; the fore boot contained luggage, if any was carried. Another of Mr. Gurney's special contrivances was a propeller fixed at the back of the carriage; it could be made to touch the ground when travelling up a hill, assisting the steam-power. A few experimental trips were made, but the carriage was not brought into general use.
J. R. S. C.