Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/39

 January 31st. Today we started all the new Ambulances and drove them down into the park below the house. Here they were carefully lined up and examined to see that no part of the equipment was missing. Then after dinner Mr. Fisher assigned each one of us to a car and gave us its number. Mine turned out to be four hundred and sixty-four, and the name plate on its side read "Schenectady Ambulance." It was very kind of the people in Schenectady to donate the machine, but it is certainly a terrible pet name for an automobile to have. There are a lot of Americans who don't know how to pronounce the word Schenectady, to say nothing of the queer noises the Frenchmen make trying to say it. Already it has been called everything from Shenickadaydy to Skinneckodidy. The motor seems to be O. K. I took it around the block for a trial run after dinner and had no trouble with the engine. A taxi collided with me up on Rue Raynouard, however, when I was completing the test, and smashed in my side-box pretty badly. The big machine turned from a narrow alley into the main street without sounding its horn and I couldn't stop in time after I saw it. The