self-coming

Updated: May 29, 2025

It was called the “flying machine” and “foot-going carriage,” while some even took it for the “fire-wheel cart,” or locomotive, about which they had heard only the vaguest rumors. Their ignorance of its source of motive power often prompted them to name it the “self-moving cart,” just as the natives of Shanghai are wont to call the electric-light “the self-coming moon.”

Thomas Gaskell Allen - Across Asia on a Bicycle