ADVENTURES OF A CURRICULAR ENGINEER
HAVING made up our mind to become an engineer, we thought it would be a mistake not to take advantage of all possible aid. We were passing the corner of Church and Fulton streets just now when we saw, in a drugstore, a fair young lady sitting in the window conducting a demonstration of Violet Rays. She wore a most appealing expression, held in her hand a glass tube with a bulbous end which was filled with pale blue electrical excitement, and was displaying various placards inviting the public to enjoy a free treatment of the Violet Ray. This Ray, her placards said, confers all imaginable pleasures and animations upon the user. It subdues inflammations and tumescences; it imparts the vigorous glow of health and beauty; it dispels lethargy and that Omar Khayyám kind of feeling that we get on a warm day in spring; it confers (so we gathered) all the benefits of Pelmanism without having to read George Creel’s little essays.
A large crowd of loitering gentry stood at the window watching the lady who was applying the Violet Ray to her own person and getting more seemly every moment. But none of them, self-satisfied chaps apparently, seemed eager to try the effect of the sparks when she pushed them towards the pane. But we, in our humility, feeling the need of greater ambition and resoluteness, offered our hand to the thunder-stone and absorbed as much of the life-giving current as she was willing to give away. We felt sure, somehow, that the Violet Ray would help us in learning to understand our new self-propelled vehicle. (We have to call it that, for to call it a car is a little too imposing; and to call it a flivver is a little too degraded; besides, it isn’t. Hereafter we shall call her by her given name, which is Dame Quickly.)
Our first adventures with Dame Quickly, by the way, were not devoid of excitement. One who on his second day as a curricular engineer, navigates the main roads of Long Island on Decoration Day may be said to be a daring soul. Titania, who was with us, says that our publisher passed by in his limousine and looked annoyed because we did not acknowledge his friendly gesture; but, indeed, all the concentrated powers of our retinal system were focussed upon the highway, and even if he docks our royalties for rudeness we cannot help it. We noticed, however, that the drivers who overhauled us as we prowled cautiously along had a way of looking sideways at us in a fixed, not exactly hostile, but at any rate curious gaze, as though to reassure themselves as to what kind of person this was. We remained bland and undismayed, for we are still a driver without spirit; we will give any man as much of the road as he wants; we have no sense of humiliation, nor any competitive lust. Any collisions that Dame Quickly suffers will occur only in her rearward parts.
Oyster Bay, we aver, is a dangerous place to be on the afternoon of Decoration Day. We reached that amiable town around two hours post meridiem, exceedingly hungry from our anxieties en route. As we unobtrusively trundled along the main street our general nervousness was not allayed by the spectacle of a motor fire engine rushing towards us at full speed. Our general idea was to attract as little attention as possible, so we made a bashful détour among back ways. To our horror, there was another fire engine, also roaring along at a furious pace. The whole town of Oyster Bay is burning up, was our thought; however, that is a small matter compared to getting this vehicle to a safe place where we can eat lunch and at the same time watch her with a paternal eye. (Our neighbour in Salamis had said something about new cars getting stolen, and we had a dreadful vision of being trailed along the highways by an experienced crook who would get away with Dame Quickly if we left her unwatched for five minutes.) But every time we approached the main street, trying to slip in unobserved, either a man on a motor bike would rush up and shout something quite unintelligible or else we would hear the roar of another fire engine dashing about. Gradually we divined that a number of Long Island fire departments were having their annual competition; but the fact that it was only a game, and not a real fire, made things worse. No fire engine would go to a real fire with the furious zest with which those fellows sped up and down the street. So, chivvied about by fire engines and cops, we had to take lunch at the only place we could approach unobserved, a very small hash-house which, since we cannot praise, we will not mention.
However, we had cause, later, to be grateful to these fire engines that had so terrified us. For, after some delightful rambling by blue watersides and under green colonnades of ancient trees, we found ourselves endeavouring to shake off the pursuing traffic on a remote and hilly byroad. We shall not go into the why and how of this matter, but the fact is that at one moment the honourable and shining Dame Quickly might have been seen docilely purring along the road; and then, a few minutes later, she was insecurely suspended half over the slope of a steep ravine, quite immovable. The curricular engineer wrung his hands. This, he asserted, is the End. With beaded brow he made some amateurish play with logs of wood that he found in that solitary woodland; but the back wheels of the beautiful, the lovely, the spirited Dame Quickly only revolved grindingly in the sand, and her commodious form hung inert, not to say in peril. Then did the engineer realize that, even on such short acquaintance, he loved her already; and the thought of intrusting her sweet body to the harsh hands of an alien garage man was poisonous. And if we leave her to go back to a garage, we thought, the earth will give; she will plunge to her doom. Titania, we think, prayed.
And then, gods from the machine, here came the Glen Cove Fire Department, some twenty strong, merrily speeding past. What they were doing up this bosky bypath we did not halt to inquire. The hand of Providence, patently, was at work. When the hand of Providence appears, one does not stop to inquire into its palmistry. We laid, bashfully, our case before these great-hearted lads. With a shout they seized our dear Mrs. Quickly; strong arms and gallant hearts of Glen Cove bore her up the perilous precipice; she stood again on level roadway, catching the sun on her noble enamel. The task accomplished, the Glen Cove Fire Department, with their two red engines behind them, looked humorously at us and seemed tacitly to inquire how any sane man would get into such a position. We said, sheepishly, a word of explanation. They roared with laughter.
