Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-08-15
On the Spur Of
the Moment
BY ROY MoULTON.
written Exclusively for Evening star.

THE DIARY OF 4 BONEHEAD
I don't blame the man who sold me
the secondhand automobile, you
know. Not in the least. He has got
to make living somehow and sell
ing secondhand automobiles to in
nocent bystanders is much safer than
raising checks, robbing orphan asy-
lums or doing second-story work in
a fashionable residential district.
1t is not a secondhand automobile,
anyhow. 1t is rebuilt" automobile.
There are no secondhand automu-
biles in the world. They are either
used" automobiles or rebuilt" ali-
tomobiles If [ remember rightly,
mine is a rebuilt automobile.
| am setting this down in my diary
because today | was called upon hv
a gentleman who may buy it, paying
me almost one-half what it cost mo
in the first place.
After | sell it, my wife is going to
have new hat and / am going 10
have new suit, coat, pants and vest.
all at one time, for the first time
since ] owned the automobile.
A secondhand automobile is
creature of temperament like a grano
opera singer 1t will never show of
when you want it to. When / am
alone in my car it will hum along the
road like q sewing machine huns
through a yard of muslin. 1t is as
silent as the nightfall on a western
prairie. But as soon as | get q.
friend in with me it begins emitting
more hideous sounds than can he
heard during a panic in a menagerie.
1t initiates all of the animals. birds
and fish and for advertisement. 1t
initiates switch engines, boiler shops
-.
chimes that one hears on the tops OF
tall steel buildings.
Perhaps you have heard a team II
horses running away with a load AZ
tin wash boilers over corduroy road
That is the way my car sounds VIII IA
I am trying to show 1t off to a friend
or prospective purchaser.
1t is afraid of milk wagons and
SHES at pieces of paper in the roa,l
when I have company with me. Ii
will stand dead still. stick its tail up
in the air and "hee-haw' like an
Arkansas mule catching its first
glimpse of a 1913 model skirt. 1t
will tear through the business streets
where the limit is eight miles ast
hour as though 1t were trying to get
away from its shadow and out in tho
country where there is no limit It
cannot be coaxed out of a slow walk
1t has more interior ailments than
a sanitarium expert can find in 4
| decrepit millionaire and it is a fiend
for glass. If there is a piece of glass
anywhere in the road that car Will
| find it. If the glass is hidden under
the sidewalk the car will tip the side
walk over and run over the glass.
| 1t has picked UP enough nails to start
| a hardware store. 1t has never had
a puncture near home, however. For
the luxury of a puncture or blow
out. it waits until it is nineteen miles
| in the country.
Kindness and tender care alike fail
| to curb its troublous spirit. When
am alone with 1t it will sometimes let
me pet 1t on the nose. but never when
we have friends along. In the pres
ence of strangers it is biting.
scratching. kicking beast of the jun
| gle, an arch-enemy of civilization
II the gentleman who called upon
me does not want to pay me any
thing for my car he can have 1t for
nothing, providing he will sign con-
tract to never try to give it back to
me, and will never leave it in my
back yard some dark night when I
am away from home.