You Should Worry Says John Henry | Page 5

pride?"
"My family pride is all right," answered Uncle Gilbert; "but there's a lot of contraptions in that machine I don't seem to recognize."
"Oh, that's all right; you're a handy little guy with machinery," I reminded him. "Hop in now and break forth. Don't let the public think that you're afraid to blow a Bubble through the streets of your native town. The rubber sweater buttoned to the chin and the Dutch awning over the forehead for yours, and on your way!"
Finally and reluctantly Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Miranda climbed into the kerosene wagon and I gave him his final instructions.
"Now, Uncle Gilbert," I said, "grab that wheel in front of you firmly with both hands and put one foot on the accelerator. Now put the other foot on the rheostat and let the left elbow gently rest on the deodorizer. Keep the rubber tube connecting with the automatic fog whistle closely between the teeth and let the right elbow be in touch with the quadruplex while the apex of the left knee is pressed over the spark coil and the right ankle works the condenser."
Uncle Gilbert grunted. "Why don't you put my left shoulder blade to work," he muttered; "it's the only part of my anatomy that hasn't got a job."
"John," whispered the nervous Aunt Miranda, "do you really think your Uncle Gilbert knows enough about the car?"
"Sure," I answered, and I was very serious about it. "Now, Uncle Gilbert, keep both eyes on the road in front of you and the rest of your face in the wagon. Start the driving wheels, repeat slowly the name of your favorite coroner, and leave the rest to Fate!"
And away they started in the Whiz Wagon.
Before they had rolled along for half a mile through town the machine suddenly began to breathe fast, and then, all of a sudden, it choked up and stopped.
"Will it explode?" whispered Aunt Miranda, pleadingly.
"No," said Uncle Gilbert, jumping out; "I think the cosmopolitan has buckled with the trapezoid," and then, with a monkey wrench, he crawled under the hood to see if the trouble was stubbornness or appendicitis.
Uncle Gilbert took a dislike to a brass valve and began to knock it with the monkey wrench, whereupon the valve got mad at him and upset a pint of ancient salad oil all over his features.
When Uncle Gilbert recovered consciousness the machine was breathing again, so he jumped to the helm, pointed the bow at Tampico, Mex., and began to cut the grass.
Alas! however, it seemed that the demon of unrest possessed that Coal-oil Coupe, for it soon began to jump and skip, and suddenly, with a snort, it took the river road and scooted away from town.
Uncle Gilbert patted it on the back and spoke soothingly, but it was no use.
Aunt Miranda pleaded with him to keep in near the shore, because she was getting seasick; but her tears were in vain.
"You must appear calm and indifferent in the presence of danger," muttered Uncle Gilbert as they rushed madly into the bosom of a flock of cows.
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But luck was with them, for with a turn of the wrist Uncle Gilbert jumped the machine across the road, and all he could feel was the sharp swish of an old cow's tail across his cheek as they rushed on and out of that animal's life forever.
Aunt Miranda tried to be brave and to chat pleasantly. "How is Wall Street these days?" she asked, and just then the machine struck a stone and she went up in the air.
"Unsettled," answered Uncle Gilbert when she got back, and then there was an embarrassing silence.
To try to hold a polite conversation, on a motor car in full flight is very much like trying to repeat the Declaration of Independence while falling from a seventh-story window.
Then, all of a sudden, the machine struck a chord in G, and started for Newfoundland at the rate of 7,000,000 miles a minute.
Aunt Miranda threw her arms around Uncle Gilbert's neck, he threw his neck around the lever, the lever threw him over, and they both threw a fit.
Down the road ahead of them a man and his wife were quarreling. They were so much in earnest that they did not hear the machine sneaking swiftly up on rubber shoes.
As the Benzine Buggy was about to fall upon the quarreling man and wife Uncle Gilbert squeezed a couple of hoarse "Toot toots" from the horn, whereupon the woman in the road threw up both hands and leaped for the man. The man threw up both feet and leaped for the fence.
The last Aunt Miranda saw of them they were entering their modest home neck and neck, and the divorce court lost a bet.
Then the machine began to climb a telegraph pole, and as it ran down the