Araminta and the Automobile

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ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

[Illustration: Thornton, gesticulating wildly, disappeared round the corner]

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

by

CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

With Illustrations by Otto Lang

[Illustration]

New York Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers

Copyright, 1903, by Henry Holt & Co.

Copyright, 1907, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

The stories in this volume were copyrighted separately, as follows:

“Araminta and the Automobile,” Copyright, 1903, by the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia

“The Deception of Martha Tucker,” Copyright, 1901, by the Century Co.

“While the Automobile Ran Down,” Copyright, 1900, by the Century Co.

The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.

Mr. Reviewer and My Dear Readers,

I have been asked to say a few words to you before you get busy with my little book that is filled with “Cheerful Americans” going out for automobile rides.

A generation or two ago, there was a poor writer (I mean poor in this world’s goods, of course) and he saw people riding about in automobiles as if they owned them, and it made him wish he could ride about in one as if he owned it. But he lacked the nerve, so he had to be content with trolleys.

After a while he made believe that he had bought an automobile, and he rode around in it with “Araminta,” and enjoyed the motion so much that he set others to riding in automobiles that he made himself in his study, and he was much pleased at the way they “went.”

After a while he made a collection of these stories and they went some more, and now they are off for a cross country trip that will undoubtedly result in the critics saying of the writer, “He has the pen of a Charles Dickens;” or “he reminds one of Robert Louis Stevenson at his best;” or “he succeeds, as no man since Sir Walter Scott has succeeded, in writing automobile stories that cause the helpless and fascinated reader to sit up all night regardless of anything save the flight of the machine;” or perhaps they will say “the mantle of Bret Harte has fallen upon him, and with the possible exception of Nathaniel Hawthorne no one has written such tales of the clutch and brake and sparker.”

Readers, need I tell you who that poor writer was? The poor boy who in 1865 had never even seen an automobile stands before you, and his name is

CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS.

CONTENTS

PAGE

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE 9

THE DECEPTION OF MARTHA TUCKER 29

WHILE THE AUTOMOBILE RAN DOWN 59

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Thornton, gesticulating wildly, disappeared around the corner Frontispiece

“Young man, experience teaches more in half an hour than books or precepts do in a year” 14

She approached the horse’s head to pet him 44

He dropped upon his bed, feeling white about the gills 88

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

Some persons spend their surplus on works of art; some spend it on Italian gardens and pergolas; there are those who sink it in golf, and I have heard of those who expended it on charity.

None of these forms of getting away with money appealed to Araminta and myself. As soon as it was ascertained that the automobile was practicable and would not cost a king’s ransom, I determined to devote my savings to the purchase of one.