inger with you in
the metropolis, that breeder of the densest solitudes--in market or
terminal, subway, court-room, library, or lobby--and hour by hour
unlock you those chained books of the soul to which the human
countenance offers the master key.

Something of a sportsman, too, is the Auto-Comrade. He it is who makes
the fabulously low score at golf--the kind of score, by the way, that is
almost invariably born to blush unseen. And he will uncomplainingly,
even zestfully, fish from dawn to dusk in a solitude so complete that
there is not even a fin to break it. But if there are fish, he finds
them. He knows how to make the flies float indefinitely forward through
yonder narrow opening, and drop, as light as thistledown, in the center
of the temptingly inaccessible pool. He knows without looking, exactly
how thick and how prehensile are the bushes and branches that lie in
wait for the back cast, and he can calculate to a grain how much urging
the reactionary three-pounder and the blest tie that binds him to the
four-ounce rod will stand.

He is one of the handiest possible persons to have along in the woods.
When you take him on a canoe trip with others, and the party comes to
"white water," he turns out to be a dead shot at rapid-shooting. He is
sure to know what to do at the supreme moment when you jam your
setting-pole immutably between two rocks and, with the alternative of
taking a bath, are forced to let go and grab your paddle; and are then
hung up on a slightly submerged rock at the head of the chief rapid
just in time to see the rest of the party disappear majestically
around the lower bend. At such a time, simply look to the
Auto-Comrade. He will carry you through. Also there is no one like him
at the moment when, having felled your moose, leaned your rifle
against a tree, and bent down the better to examine him, the creature
suddenly comes to life.

In tennis, when you wake up to find that your racket has just smashed
a lob on the bounce from near the back-net, scoring a clean ace
between your paralyzed opponents, you ought to know that the racket
was guided by that superior sportsman; and if you are truly modest,
you will admit that your miraculous stop wherewith the team whisked
the baseball championship out of the fire in the fourteenth inning was
due to his unaided efforts.

There are other games about which he is not so keen: solitaire, for
instance. For solitaire is a social game that soon loses i