Page:Motors and motor-driving (1902).djvu/53

Rh Then, again, as to the station work: your expected friend, we will imagine, misses the train but there is no horse to catch cold waiting at the railway, followed by an intimation from your groom next morning that the horse cannot be used for three or four days owing to a bad chill. Altogether the motorcar must revolutionise our social life in the country, and let us hope before long will lead to the bettering of our cross-country roads. The horse, poor beast, has never been able to tell us what he endures from bad roads, and the pace of a horsedrawn vehicle has been too slow for even the springs to suffer much; but if you get into a motor-car going five-and-twenty miles an hour over a road which you have hitherto deemed good, the engine and car will very soon tell you the difference between what the road surveyor's work has been and what it ought to be.

For station work in the country I would rather recommend—and I am supposing myself writing for those who have now a stable of some half a dozen horses—a covered as well as an open motor, or perhaps a motor which can have a top fitted on to it when the weather is bad. Ladies do not like arriving at tea-time with their fringes out of curl, or the feathers in their hats drooping or facing the wrong way; but always remember that the driver should be quite free, and that nothing is more dangerous on a misty day, and especially at night, than a glass frame on which the rain will fall and eventually almost obscure the road from his gaze. The man who drives the motor must always have the best possible view of the road, just as on the footplate of a locomotive every driver knows that in times of mist or rain the difficulty of seeing through the windows of the cab is immensely increased, and careful drivers prefer to have their heads round the edge.

For hunting work you must bear in mind the susceptibilities of the district. I am glad here to be able to put on record—for it will seem curious a few years hence—that a Master of one of the Midland packs has asked the members of his hunt to avoid using motor-cars for the purpose of coming to meets,