Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-26
THE GOWNSMAN

n EXCELLENT old author was once
\ asked his opinion of the blessed state
of matrimony. He replied that as to mar
riage he belonged to the sect of heretics
who deny purgatory; for marriage is either
heaven or hell-it can occupy no middle
ground. Now the Gownsman does not pro-
pose to talk of matrimony, or rather he
does rot presume to; there are wholesome
deterrents from a course rash in the
examples of those who believe in marriage
too much too little, not wisely or too well.
But it was impressed upon the Gownsman
the other day during the protracted period
of one of those trials of patience and purse
that come to most of us who persist in
going about on wheels, that the state of
automobiling, while not always blessed
like that of matrimony, possesses an ad-
vantage in the circumstance that it is
less frequently heaven or that horrd op.
posite which defines war. To go about
much on wheels is to dwell in a continual
state of sustained purgatory.
AUTOMOBILING - better. the blessed
n state of gaddng about ON wheels-does
not consist in the possession of a grand
euuipage-or rather two or three of them
served by expert lackeys, liveried, lux
urious. Much less is it blessed state to
rattle about in tin wagon, turned out,
pressed. stamped and boxed by an ingeni-
Gus and enginous manufacturer now on
his way to the United States Senate;
contraption constructed miraculously to
continue to run no matter how you or its
owner or anybody else may run it down.
No the truly blessed state of gadding
about on wheels lies in neither of these
extremes: it is neither altogether heaven
nor that other place-except, indeed. at
times The truly blessed state in gadding
about on wheels is rather an exciting con-
dtion of adventure in which the JOY of
motion, the sense of a potential freedom
at least to go anywhere, is chastened by
lurking dread of the unknown,
dread lest something may happen - and
it always does happen--a heightened spirit
of adventure into the perhaps, involving
not so much actual danger as the delights
of the unexpected. In a word, gadding
about on wheels is like or unlike the
blessed state of matrimony-have 1t which
you choose-in its spirit of adventure and
in the certainty of its uncertainty.
TNO BE tied up miles from anywhere. that
live possession of yours which has
swept over hills, hurried around curves
and tucked away miles after miles, now
suddenly-and always without rhyme or
reason - becomes inert, dead mass,
taking oxen--humihating thuught, oxen.
to move It. surely this is IN the nature
of vicissitude. To watch last years black
smith, Transmitted into an expert machin-
ist. scratch and nod his sapient head at a
dollar a nod to wait in lovely rural seclu-
sion under lofty elms or spreading beeches,
| beside delicious streams mockingly bab-
bling or, if so lucky, to loiter wearily in
some inn of the wayside. in rooms deco
rated with chromos, the furniture covered
with plush-these are among the vicissi-
tudes of the man who would 80 on wheels
| If he could.
DUT when at last. by painful and ex-
~ pensive process, the blacksmith has
fathpmsd Al the PULSES Of your machine
i1d The pGr( 60 aetpa7ly cou.e fpsln =
1r<sr cISn tue e<her pjas3
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