|
cylinder was virtually a necessity.
"Why don't you prime her, Frank?" I asked.
"No — I don't like to," he replied. "Some day I might get
caught out on the road without a priming can. No use letting the engine
get into bad habits."
After Frank, our next chauffeur was Alfred — no connection
with our foreman Alfred — and one winter night he drove me to
a party in Boston. The snowdrifts were high on either side of the
Waltham-Watertown road, and there were stretches with no room to pass an
oncoming vehicle. At one point we noticed a pair of headlights coming
towards us that shone with the characteristic unevenness of a Ford. Ford
lights ran from a magneto or genera-tor, and their intensity was
proportional to the speed of the motor. Alfred,
realizing that he had the larger and more powerful vehicle, decided to
hold his own, while the Ford driver, rather than meet
diaster, headed for a snowdrift and climbed half way
up before coming to a stop at an extremely precarious angle. On seeing
this Alfred went into a state of panic, turned off all the
lights, stepped on the throttle and sped away from the scene of
the accident. Realizing that he was being followed, he slowed down
considerably and turned the lights on again. By the time
we reached Watertown Square with its wider road, our pursuer overtook us
and told a policeman what had happened. The policeman stopped us and
listened to our pursuer's testimony, every word of which was true
and every word of which Alfred denied. 1, being a good witness for the
defense, kept my mouth shut. When we were finally allowed to proceed
Alfred said, "Guess we shouldn't have done it. Lucky there
wasn't a police- man there to see it happen or we would be in
trouble." |
