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During the years 1888-1900 strange reports of smooth-moving, horseless cars, frequently appearing in public in France, began to reach Britain, and people wondered if the French had stolen a march on us, and if there were anything in the new invention after all. Our engineers had just begun to grasp the immense possibilities of Daimler's engine, but the Government gave them no encouragement.
It leaves Simla of the Imperial councils by a stately road; it passes beyond, but now narrowing, climbing higher beside the khuds or steep drops to the precipitous valleys beneath, and the rumor of Simla grows distant and the way is quiet, for, owing to the danger of driving horses above the khuds, such baggage as you own must be carried by coolies, and you yourself must either ride on horseback or in the little horseless carriage of the Orient, here drawn and pushed by four men.
Amid much apparent confusion and tremendous chattering, a sort of rough ramp was engineered up the slip, and presently the horseless landau appeared borne in triumph by a mob of coolies superintended by our priceless Sabz Ali.
In reading his technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit machine shop, and devoted his evenings to the production of a gasoline engine. His young wife was exceedingly concerned about his health; the neighbors' snap judgment was that he was insane.
Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best that is in him his love, his trust, his life's work but it is only the best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the remnant.
If you had told me yesterday that to-night I should be sitting shut up in a horseless brougham at the back of an inn, alone with a strange man massaging my foot, I should have " "Of course you would. But there you are, lass, you never know your luck." She looked at me darkly. "Needs must when the devil drives," she said. I looked at her. "My skin may be thick," said I, "but it's not impenetrable.
As your time was so charmingly taken up during your visit home with a younger member of his family, you probably overlooked opportunities of hearing him talk, and do not know what an interesting man he can be. He will soon begin to build his factory here for the manufacture of automobiles, which he says is a term he prefers to "horseless carriages."
Still giggling, they went on their way, past the old smithy, where a pleasant breath of warmth and a splendid ringing of hammers came from the forge, and past the new garage of raw wood with the still-astonishing miracle of a "horseless carriage" in its big window, pots of paint and oil standing inside its door, and workmen, behind a barrier of barrels and planks, laying a cement sidewalk in front.
Since this business is so invested with human interest, let us go back for a moment to its beginnings. Here you find all the properties, accessories, and environment to fit the launching of a great drama. Toward the close of the precarious nineties, a few men wrestled with the big vision of a horseless age.
At first the "horseless carriage" was considered merely a freak notion and many wise people explained with particularity why it could never be more than a toy. No man of money even thought of it as a commercial possibility. I cannot imagine why each new means of transportation meets with such opposition.
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