Men who know all the risks attending an unguided machine going eighty
miles an hour will calmly tell you that a planetary system moving
thousands of times as fast needs no guidance of God.
When these racing motor cars reach a speed of eighty miles an
hour, they must drive themselves, for no human brain is capable
of dealing with all the emergencies that may arise should
that rate be maintained for any period worth speaking of. The
human animal is not designed to travel eighty miles an hour.
Neither the human brain nor the human eye can keep pace with it.
The brain declines to respond to the tax upon it; so the big
racing-car dashes on minus the brain by which it is supposed
to be controlled, and the unexpected obstruction is smashed
up, or the car is, before the mental activities come into
play.--FORBES WINSLOW, _The Automobile Magazine_.
(2574)
* * * * *
Grant planned, but a power unseen disposed. It was his firm
purpose not to remain in the army. He could not warm up to
the profession of arms. He saw nothing in it for one of his
temperament and bent of mind. So he resolved to prepare himself
for the chair of mathematics in some college, preferably a
professorship in the military academy. He wrote a letter
to Professor Church, at West Point, asking to become his
assistant when the next detail should be made. The answer was
satisfactory, and the lieutenant was hopeful. He began to review
his West Point course, but this was as far as he ever got
toward the goal of his ambition. As the stars in their courses
fought against Sisera, so the course of events defeated all his
cherished plans to escape an army life. The trouble with Mexico
began before Professor Church saw an opportunity to give the
lieutenant an assistant professorship, and his hope of ever
being ordered to the academy vanished forever.--NICHOLAS
SMITH, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”
(2575)
See FAITH AND SUPPORT.