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Just before starting on its record trip from Cleveland to New York. It is propelled by the hydrocarbon system.

the horses, and keep the wagon and harness in repair for a year, besides adding the interest on the outlay for such a horse wagon, would amount to about $525. For

an electric automobile, where the electricity is purchased at a station, the equivalent cost would be about $425; if the electricity were supplied by a private plant, the cost would be $135. Here is a saving of from twenty to seventy per cent. Figures such as these cannot fail to make those who depend on horse-pulled wagons in their business think seriously. Indeed, many of the stores in New York are adopting motor vehicles for delivery wagons. In these calculations the cost of the driver is not taken into consideration. "Any man with sufficient intelligence to fit him to take charge of a horse can be taught to manage an automobile." This is what the manufacturers say. Far be it from me to indorse the statement; for I am persuaded by long observation that, low though the intelligence of the horse is ranked among domestic animals, quite one-fourth of those in use now do the work and the thinking as well.

The company in New York that oper

In

ates the electric cabs puts a new man
through a course of training before he is
intrusted with a cab in the streets. The
teacher's cab is very strongly built, with a
buffer at each end, so as to lessen the
chances of damages either in front or
behind. When I saw it, it reminded me
of a country exhorter's definition of double
entente. "A double entender," he said,
without any effort at French pronuncia-
tion, "is a mean French thing that goes
off in front and kicks in the rear."
this double-ender the instructor, by means
of levers, can always take control and so
prevent accidents. In France there is a
regular training-school for drivers near
Paris. On a hillside there are dummy
figures to make the course as much like a
city street as possible. The driver is con-
sidered expert when he can go over the
course without toppling over any of
these dummy figures. As the law of right-
of-way is the same in France for auto-
mobiles that it is for ordinary carriages,
the dummies on the training course are
presumably put there merely to exercise
the driver in deftness of guiding, and not
to teach him to respect the lives and limbs

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of foot-passengers.

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In this country, however, an automobile driver has no more license to run down a pedestrian than has that of any other vehicle. As most of the vehicles belong to incorporated companies, it is a wise economy to employ only expert drivers, for juries exercise a sympathetic discretion in assessing damages when a corporation is a defendant in a suit at law. And a driver of an electric vehicle has both hands full while both of his feet are employed. With his left hand he manages the power lever, pushing it forward one notch at a time to increase his speed. With his right hand he controls the steering lever. His left heel is on the emergency switch, and his left toes ring the gong. With his right heel he turns the reversing switch, while he can apply the brake with either foot that happens to be disengaged. A man can learn to do all this in a week, big job though it seems. If he has had experience in driving horses in a crowded city, he learns more quickly; for the automobile requires alertness of eyes, hands, and mind, as well as natural quickness of movement,

As has been suggested, improvements in the future are to be expected in the electric motors, but at this time the gasoline motor, for general use both in the city and country, appears to be the most practical and the most economical. It is lighter and cheaper, and no charging station or charging plant is necessary. Gasoline is cheap and is obtainable everywhere. Gasoline carriages are, however, more subject to vibrations, and the passengers are rarely free from the unpleasant odors of burned gases. The most successful of the French automobiles are of this kind, and the long-distance races on the Continent have generally been won by them. A speed of fifty miles an hour has been maintained for short distances, and thirty miles an hour has been kept up for long distances, but even abroad this is exceptional. Of course such rapid traveling is out of the question in this country in the present condition of our roads. And even in France, where the roads are excellent, and an injured pedestrian is the culprit, such a rate of speed is for sport, and not for business, except

when sport is made business. Many of the American manufacturers discourage road racing, and their vehicles are not made for a speed greater than twenty-five miles an hour when doing their utmost. Some, however, are very ambitious to try conclusions with their European competitors as to speed over long distances. Mr. Edison has confessed to the desire to beat the world when he has completed the task upon which he is now engaged. His, however, is to be an electric carriage. As much intelligence is required to drive a gasoline as an electric vehicle, and probably it is a trifle more difficult to keep in order.

The first auto-propelling road carriages were for steam, and there are those who believe to-day that the best automobile will be propelled by steam. Several American manufacturers are preparing to put steam carriages on the market, even steam. buggies. In Europe for heavy coaches those designed for steam propulsion are now considered satisfactory. Road steam engines for heavy loads at slow rates of speed have long been used in Europe, where there are hard roads fit for such traffic. For light wagons the use of steam is another matter. Some critics say that the fact that the law requires that each

operator of a steam engine shall have a license will prevent steam road motors from becoming popular. This does not seem to be an insuperable objection.

In addition to electric, gasoline, and steam motor vehicles, we have compressed air, carbonic acid gas, alcohol, and ammonia motor vehicles. The first three have been proved to be practical road vehicles; the others are, to an extent, still in the experimental stage, though companies with large capitalization have been organized to do the trucking in great cities with heavy wagons propelled by compressed air. The promotors of this enterprise do not agree that there is anything experimental in their project.

As to the best name for these new road motors there is much discussion. The French Academy has done what it could to settle the matter by deciding that "automobile" is a properly constructed word. This dictum may be binding in France, but here the makers prefer "motorvehicle." Others, with a fondness for picturesqueness of expression, like "horseless carriage." It may be that none of these will be satisfactory to the public, as each is long, each a big mouthful of syllables. There is sure to be a shorter-one or two syllables at the most.

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A

The Goethe Anniversary

By Kuno Francke

Professor of German Literature at Harvard University

Ta time when all Germany is preparing to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth birthday of Goethe, it seems proper to consider for a moment the essential features in the character of Germany's foremost poet, to pass in brief review those works of his which even now stand out as embodying vital problems and aspirations of modern society. The number and the significance of these works are all the more impressive if we remember that, apart from his lyrics and ballads, which are beyond cavil, Goethe has produced little which from the merely formal point of view is not open to serious criticism.

First, of course, in order of spiritual significance, stands his "Faust." It would be folly to overlook the artistic defects of this drama, the looseness of its composition, the lack of proportion between the Gretchen episode and the rest of the First Part, the absence of outward atonement for Faust's guilt, the motley symbolism of the Second Part. But the fact remains that in all modern literature there is no poem which is so complete an embodiment of what is noblest in modern life its restless activity, its incessant striving from lower spheres of existence to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity.

Goethe's "Faust" is a glorification of individual culture hallowed by devotion to collective tasks. Isolation, selfishness, negation, are shown to destroy themselves. Mephisto, the arch scoffer and deceiver, is defeated, because he has no conception of the all-conquering power of a steadfast purpose. Euphorion, the representative of uncontrolled fancy and willful aspiration, while presuming to soar to inaccessible heights, falls helpless to the ground. Faust is saved, because he makes every new experience a stepping-stone for a higher and more complete form of exist ence. Sin itself seems to ennoble him. After he has seen Gretchen in the dungeon, after he has been overwhelmed at

the sight of her fate, by "mankind's collected woe," he seems to be raised above all lower desire. Henceforth his life belongs to the world at large, and every new temptation he turns into an opportunity for wider activity. He ends as a champion of democracy; his last vision is that of a free people living on a free soil; and, dying, he proclaims the redeeming power of ceaseless endeavor:

Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;

The last result of wisdom stamps it true: He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.

Next to "Faust" stands "Wilhelm Meister." Here, again, it is easy to see artistic shortcomings. We often feel, in reading this book, as though we could not breathe in this atmosphere of erratic dilettanteism. We even feel something akin to contempt for these men and women who keep a most scrupulous account of their own precious emotions, who bestow the most serious consideration upon a host of insignificant trifles, and who, at the same time, only too often are found erring in the simplest question of right and wrong. With the exception of Mignon and Philine, the child of the past and the child of a day, there is not a single prominent character in the book capable of forgetting himself and living unreflectively for the homely duties of the present. But while this is true, it is also true that the one ideal running through this book, the one goal for which nearly all of its leading characters are striving, is this very self-forgetfulness-self-forgetfulness as the result of fullest self-development and self-expansion.

This is an ideal so far removed from selfishness that it may be called the gospel of a secular Christianity. If the teaching of Christianity rests on the belief that every individual soul has within it the possibility of salvation, the teaching of "Wilhelm Meister" rests on the belief that every individual mind has within it a tendency toward complete manifestation.

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