r.

ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

BY CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

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 appeal 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.

Araminta and I lived in a suburban town; she because she loves Nature
and I because I love Araminta. We have been married for five years.

I am a bank clerk in New York, and morning and night I go through the
monotony of railway travel, and for one who is forbidden to use his eyes
on the train and who does not play cards it _is_ monotony, for in the
morning my friends are either playing cards or else reading their
papers, and one does not like to urge the claims of conversation on one
who is deep in politics or the next play of his antagonist; so my
getting to business and coming back are in the nature of purgatory. I
therefore hailed the automobile as a Heaven-sent means of swift motion
with an agreeable companion, and with no danger of encountering either
newspapers or cards. I have seen neither reading nor card-playing going
on in any automobile.

The community in which I live is not progressive, and when I said that I
expected to buy an automobile as soon as my ship came in I was frowned
upon by my neighbors. Several of them have horses, and all, or nearly
all, have feet. The horsemen were not more opposed to my proposed
ownership than the footmen--I should say pedestrians. They all thought
automobiles dangerous and a menace to public peace, but of course I
pooh-poohed their fears and, being a person of a good deal of stability
of purpose, I went on saving my money, and in course of time I bought an
automobile of the electric sort.

Araminta is plucky, and I am perfectly fearless. When the automobile was
brought home and housed in the little barn that is on our property, the
man who had backed it in told me that he had orders to stay and show me
how it worked, but I laughed at him--good-naturedly yet firmly. I said,
"Young man, experience teaches more in half an hour than books or
precepts do in a year. A would-be newspaper man does not go to a school
of journalism if he is wise; he gets a position on a newspaper and
le