Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...ceases to be. Towns, to reach which by means of a railway, with the inevitable stops and possibly a change, would take an entire morning, and part of the afternoons, were now, I found, only half-anhour's run away. In fact, there was not a town within a radius of thirty miles which did not seem to come (metaphorically) crowding inconveniently near to my own front door. To get to any of these towns was a matter of stepping into the car--and stepping out. That was all--so long that is to say, as B was driving it, and we were travelling late at night when no other traffic was about. Even in taking a slight dip in the road--and to do B justice, I admit that he slowed off and went more warily down a decline--we seemed to take it by diving, as a seal takes the water, not as a Christian carriage should on wheels. Up hill and on the level our speed was terrific. The car became as it were alive--a conscious mutinous personality, which defied and charged Old Night and Space and Time and even Eternity--which seemed by sheen force to be clearing and thrusting aside before it an army of obstacles that blocked the way--not a mere machine, with oiled bearings and rubbered tyres, running along a road. Ahead, the high headlights glared for a hundred yards. Trees, houses, hedgerows and walls, caught sleeping, but now rudely awakened, and looking unreal and uncanny in the weird white light, seemed to turn and crane astonished heads after us as we tore by. Rabbits, out to court, to dine, or to take a frisking constitutional, stood or squatted stone-still and momentarily petrified by terror where the light had found them, before taking the mad leap that carried them twisting, jerking, contorting, this way and that to cover and safety, or alas! as sometimes happened, to be squelc...
