Having made up our mind to become an engineer, we thought it would be
a mistake not to take advantage of all possible aid. We were passing
the corner of Church and Fulton streets just now when we saw, in
a drugstore, a fair young lady sitting in the window conducting a
demonstration of Violet Rays. She wore a most appealing expression,
held in her hand a glass tube with a bulbous end which was filled with
pale blue electrical excitement, and was displaying various placards
inviting the public to enjoy a free treatment of the Violet Ray. This
Ray, her placards said, confers all imaginable pleasures and animations
upon the user. It subdues inflammations and tumescences; it imparts the
vigorous glow of health and beauty; it dispels lethargy and that Omar
Khayyám kind of feeling that we get on a warm day in spring; it confers
(so we gathered) all the benefits of Pelmanism without having to read
George Creel’s little essays.
A large crowd of loitering gentry stood at the window watching the lady
who was applying the Violet Ray to her own person and getting more
seemly every moment. But none of them, self-satisfied chaps apparently,
seemed eager to try the effect of the sparks when she pushed them
towards the pane. But we, in our humility, feeling the need of greater
ambition and resoluteness, offered our hand to the thunder-stone and
absorbed as much of the life-giving current as she was willing to give
away. We felt sure, somehow, that the Violet Ray would help us in
learning to understand our new self-propelled vehicle. (We have to call
it that, for to call it a _car_ is a little too imposing; and to call
it a flivver is a little too degraded; besides, it isn’t. Hereafter we
shall call her by her given name, which is Dame Quickly.)
Our first adventures with Dame Quickly, by the way, were not devoid
of excitement. One who on his second day as a curricular engineer,
navigates the main roads of Long Island on Decoration Day may be said
to be a daring soul. Titania, who was with us, says that our publisher
passed by in his limousine and looked annoyed because we did not
acknowledge his friendly gesture; but, indeed, all the concentrated
powers of our retinal system were focussed upon the highway, and even
if he docks our royalties for rudeness we cannot help it. We noticed,
however, that the drivers who overhauled us as we prowled cautiously
along had a way of looking sideways at us in a fixed, not exactly
hostile, but at any rate curious gaze, as though to reassure themselves
as to what kind of person this was. We remained bland and undismayed,
for we are still a driver without spirit; we will give any man as much
of the road as he wants; we have no sense of humiliation, nor any
competitive lust. Any collisions that Dame Quickly suffers will occur
only in her rearward parts.
Oyster Bay, we aver, is a dangerous place to be on the afternoon of
Decoration Day. We reached that amiable town around two hours post
meridiem, exceedingly hungry from our anxieties en route. As we
unobtrusively trundled along the main street our general nervousness
was not allayed by the spectacle of a motor fire engine rushing towards
us at full speed. Our general idea was to attract as little attention
as possible, so we made a bashful détour among back ways. To our
horror, there was another fire engine, also roaring along at a furious
pace. The whole town of Oyster Bay is burning up, was our thought;
however, that is a small matter compared to getting this vehicle to a
safe place where we can eat lunch and at the same time watch her with
a paternal eye. (Our neighbour in Salamis had said something about new
cars getting stolen, and we had a dreadful vision of being trailed
along the highways by an experienced crook who would get away with Dame
Quickly if we left her unwatched for five minutes.) But every time we
approached the main street, trying to slip in unobserved, either a man
on a motor bike would rush up and shout something quite unintelligible
or else we would hear the roar of another fire engine dashing about.
Gradually we divined that a number of Long Island fire departments were
having their annual competition; but the fact that it was only a game,
and not a real fire, made things worse. No fire engine would go to a
real fire with the furious zest with which those fellows sped up and
down the street. So, chivvied about by fire engines and cops, we had to
take lunch at the only place we could approach unobserved, a very small
hash-house which, since we cannot praise, we will not mention.
However, we had cause, later, to be grateful to these fire engines
that had so terrified us. For, after some delightful rambling by blue
watersides and under green colonnades of ancient trees, we found
ourselves endeavouring to shake off the pursuing traffic on a remote
and hilly byroad. We shall not go into the why and how of this matter,
but the fact is that at one moment the honourable and shining Dame
Quickly might have been seen docilely purring along the road; and
then, a few minutes later, she was insecurely suspended half over the
slope of a steep ravine, quite immovable. The curricular engineer
wrung his hands. This, he asserted, is the End. With beaded brow he
made some amateurish play with logs of wood that he found in that
solitary woodland; but the back wheels of the beautiful, the lovely,
the spirited Dame Quickly only revolved grindingly in the sand, and her
commodious form hung inert, not to say in peril. Then did the engineer
realize that, even on such short acquaintance, he loved her already;
and the thought of intrusting her sweet body to the harsh hands of an
alien garage man was poisonous. And if we leave her to go back to a
garage, we thought, the earth will give; she will plunge to her doom.
Titania, we think, prayed.
And then, gods from the machine, here came the Glen Cove Fire
Department, some twenty strong, merrily speeding past. What they were
doing up this bosky bypath we did not halt to inquire. The hand of
Providence, patently, was at work. When the hand of Providence appears,
one does not stop to inquire into its palmistry. We laid, bashfully,
our case before these great-hearted lads. With a shout they seized our
dear Mrs. Quickly; strong arms and gallant hearts of Glen Cove bore her
up the perilous precipice; she stood again on level roadway, catching
the sun on her noble enamel. The task accomplished, the Glen Cove Fire
Department, with their two red engines behind them, looked humorously
at us and seemed tacitly to inquire how any sane man would get into
such a position. We said, sheepishly, a word of explanation. They
roared with laughter.
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