There Were Gaps In The Hills, Through Which We Caught Glimpses Of
The City, Lying Miles Away In Its Natural Amphitheater; And At
That Distance We Could Revel In Its Picturesqueness And Forget Its
Bouquet Of Weird Stenches.
We could even forget that the automobile
we had hired for the excursion had one foot in the grave and several
of its most important vital organs in the repair shop.
I reckon
that was the first automobile built. No; I take that back. It
never was a first - it must have been a second to start with.
I once owned a half interest in a sick automobile. It was one of
those old-fashioned, late Victorian automobiles, cut princesse
style, with a plaquette in the back; and it looked like a cross
between a fiat-bed job press and a tailor's goose. It broke down
so easily and was towed in so often by more powerful machines that
every time a big car passed it on the road it stopped right where
it was and nickered. Of a morning we would start out in that car
filled with high hopes and bright anticipations, but eventide would
find us returning homeward close behind a bigger automobile, in a
relationship strongly suggestive of the one pictured in the
well-known Nature Group entitled: "Mother Hippo, With Young." We
refused an offer of four hundred dollars for that machine. It had
more than four hundred dollars' worth of things the matter with it.
The car we chartered at Naples for our trip to Pompeii reminded
me very strongly of that other car of which I was part owner.
Between them there was a strong family resemblance, not alone in
looks but in deportment also.
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