The Auto-comrade has an adjustable brow. It can be raised high enough to hold and reverberate and add rich overtones to the grandest chords of thought ever struck by a Plato, a Buddha, or a Kant. The next instant it may easily be lowered to the point where Hy Mayer’s latest cartoon or the tiny cachinnation of a machine-made Chesterton paradox will not ring entirely hollow. As for his voice, it can at times be more musical than Melba’s or Caruso’s. Without being raised above a whisper, it can girdle the globe. It can barely breathe some delicious new melody; yet the thing will float forth not only undiminished, but gathering beauty, significance, and incisiveness in every land it passes through.
The Auto-comrade is an erect, wiry young figure of an athlete. As he trades at the Seven-League Boot and Shoe Concern, it never bothers him to accompany you on the longest tramps. His feet simply cannot be tired out. As for his hands, they are always alert to give you a lift up the rough places on the mountain-side. He has remarkable presence of body. In any emergency he is usually the best man on the spot.
A popular saw asserts that “looks do not count.” But in this case they do count. For the Auto-comrade looks exactly like himself. He is at once seer, creator, accomplisher, and present help in time of trouble. But his every-day occupation is that of entertainer. He is the joy-bringer—the Prometheus of pleasure. In his vicinity there is no such thing as ennui or lonesomeness. Emerson wrote:
“When I would spend a lonely day
Sun and moon are in my way.”
But for pals of the Auto-comrade, not only sun, moon, etc., are in the way, but all of his own unlimited resources. For every time and season he has a fittingly varied repertory of entertainment.
Now and again he startles you with the legerdemain feat of snatching brand-new ideas out of the blue, like rabbits out of a hat. While you stand at the port-hole of your cabin and watch the rollers rushing back to the beloved home-land you are quitting, he marshals your friends and acquaintances into a long line for a word of greeting or a rapid-fire chat, just as though you were some idol of the people, and were steaming past the Statue of Liberty on your way home from lion-slaughter in Africa, and the Auto-comrade were the factotum at your elbow who asks, “What name, please?”
After the friends and acquaintances, he even brings up your bêtes noires and dearest enemies for inspection and comment. Strangely enough, viewed in this way, these persons no longer seem so contemptible or pernicious or devilish as they once did. At this point your factotum rubs your eye-glasses bright with the handkerchief he always carries about for slate-cleaning purposes, and, lo! you even begin to discover hitherto unsuspected good points about the chaps.
Then there are always your million and one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universeful of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow-musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet the godlike autocracy of the solo, with its opportunity for uninterrupted, uncoerced, wide self-expression. Sometimes, however, in the first flush of escape with him to the wilds, you are fain to clap your hand over his mouth in order the better to taste the essentially folkless savor of solitude. For music is a curiously social art, and Browning was right when he said, “Who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once.”