The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1911-09-26
BY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

The automobile skids gayly down
the street. the while pedestrians dodge
and sidestep.
The lolling occupants gaze haught-
lily at the lowly populace.
Hitherto mild and harmless persons
who gossip with their neighbors over
the back fence and gracefully murder
the Kings English, scarce deign to
wag an eyelid in the direction of the
their relatives dead.
Is there not speed ordinance?
And yet our noble protectors of the
law daily behold motor-cars running
like mad up and down the principal
thoroughfares of the town. Corners
are turned with r-breadth escapes
without the footing OF horn. Ell
derby people hesitate to cross streets.
And indeed it is as much as the life is
worth.
1t is a subject that agitates the pub.
lie of every considerable community.
Everybody recognizes its existence
and the Importance of putting on the
legal brakes.
But what cares the merry AUTOMOBILE
list? What's dog or two in the days
work? Or even a COW? Its uncomfor-
table to kill child, say, but their
parents ought to keep 'em off the
streets.
Everybody understands about the
automobile. They read about it in the
papers.
It's the motorcycle and the bicycle
that need some attention. The riders
are as regardless of the pedestrian as
the drivers of automobiles.
Not long since an elderly woman
started to cross the street just as a
bicycle going at great rate of speed
turned the corner. She was knocked
down, her head violently hitting the
curb, with a resultant injury from
which she has not yet recovered. No
bell was rung. 1t was dusk. She did
MT see the bicycle approaching from
the other street.
The other day a woman crossing an
alley barely escaped a bicycle which
without ringing the bell, turned into
thC cllCS QAtAouSh LhS NOIldll udO
the right of way"
why didn't you ring your bell?"
she asked Indignantly.
"Yah-ahah!" sneeringly yelped the
boy as he sped down the alley.
The fact that the pedestrian has the
first consideration is recognized the
world over in civilized communities.
Pedestrians are often careless, to be
sure, and will get directly in the way
of vehicle of whatever character at
a time when the drivers of the latter
think thay are not interfering with
those on foot. But this is not often.
And halt should certainly be call
ed not only on reckless drivers Of au-
tomobiles, but the equally regardless
users of motorcycles and bicycles.
The world is full of little people
who criticise and Judge and laugh and
misunderstood the few real intelh-
gences," says David Graham Phillips
in 1.-The Grain of Dust"
Originality is fatal.
Step out of the beaten path ever
so little-veer slightly from the
straight rule of custom, dare to live
your own life in your own way, pre-
sumo to cast any reflection upon that
great majority which is said, without
any basis in reason, to always be
right-that majority which Ibsen says
is always wrongly varying from it's
set conventions-do this and you have
the whole pack at your heels, snarl-
ing, swapping, sneering.
Who cannot on the moment bring to
some remarkable per-
sonality, one of those real intelligen-
ces" Phillips refers to, some great-vis-
toned entity to whom clothes are a
mere incident and social tradition a
cobwebby texture to be ignored or
brushed aside in the consideration OF
the big, vital things-who cannot
name one of these Municipalities, and
in the same breath, name his long line
of jeering detractors- of the
microscopic souls, of the SNUG ego
tism, of the heaven-born knowledge