With the greenhorn the automobile is long-suffering.  There was a new owner in Boston, whose name is mercifully suppressed, who took his family out for a first ride.  In going down a hill on which the clay was slippery from recent rain it became necessary to turn out for a car coming up.  The new driver made the turn so successfully that he turned clear over the edge of the embankment.  Having nothing but air to support it, the auto turned completely over without spilling a passenger and landed right side up and on an even keel in a marsh fifteen feet below.  It was necessary to get a team to pull the car out of the mud, but once on the solid road the new owner simply cranked ’er up and went on his way rejoicing.

Another new owner could not find the key to fasten one rear wheel on the axle when he unloaded his auto from the car in which it had been shipped from the factory.  Nevertheless, he started up the motor according to directions and traveled twelve miles with one wheel driving.  By this time the outraged motor was red hot.  Whereupon the new owner stopped at a farm-house and dashed several buckets of cold water on it.  Then he plugged around the country a week or so before he decided to go to the agent to lodge a complaint that his derned car didn’t “pull” well.

Still another new owner complained that his car did not give satisfactory service.  The agent was not at all surprised that it didn’t when, upon investigation, he found that the car had been driven five hundred miles without a single drop of oil being applied to transmission gear and rear axle.

George Robertson, the racing driver, in tuning up for the Vanderbilt race, went over the embankment at the Massapequa turn on Long Island at the rate of sixty miles an hour.  The car turned over twice, but finally stopped right side up.  Robertson received a cut on one arm in the fracas, but neither he nor the car was so badly injured but what they could get back to New York, a distance of twenty-five miles, under their own power.  There the steering wheel was repaired at a cost of $5, the radiator at a cost of $3, and Robertson’s arm at $2.

But the prize-winner was the Fiat racing machine which threw a tire while going fifty-five miles an hour on the Brighton Beach track.  The flying racer, now utterly uncontrollable, dashed through two fences, one of them pretty substantial, cut down a tree eight inches in diameter, and finally came to a stop right side up.  E.H.  Parker, the driver, and his mechanician, were somewhat surprised, but otherwise undamaged.  They put on a new tire and in twenty minutes were back in the race again.

What the automobile can do in the way of cheapness was shown by the cost tests, sanctioned and confirmed by the American Automobile Association, between a Maxwell runabout and a horse and buggy.  In seven days, in all kinds of weather and over city and country roads, the horse and buggy traveled 197 miles at a cost per passenger mile of 2-1/2 cents.  The runabout made 457 miles in the same time, and the cost per passenger mile was 1.8 cents.  This covered operation, maintenance, and depreciation, and, incidentally, all speed laws were observed.