'Since then on many a car you'll seeA broomstick, plain as plain can be;On every stick there's a witch astride—The string, you see, to her leg is tied!'"
'Since then on many a car you'll seeA broomstick, plain as plain can be;On every stick there's a witch astride—The string, you see, to her leg is tied!'"
Grandma and Harriet laughed.
"How fast are these cars going?" asked Grandma.
"About ten miles an hour including the stops. Probably the rate without stops is about fifteen miles," answered Mr. Lewis.
"There never could be power enough in electricity to drive the car much faster than that, I suppose?" said Grandma.
"Yes, they have already gone considerably faster," replied her son. "I was reading only last night that back in 1880 when Thomas Edison first began his experiments with electricity as a motive power on his own private track at Menlo Park, he drove his little electric train more than twice as fast. In June 1880, Grosvenor Lowry wrote, 'Have spent part of a day at Menlo, and all is glorious. I have ridden at forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway—and we ran off the track.'"
"It is dangerous after all, isn't it?" commented Grandma.
"Most people do not think so. That was when they were experimenting and of course accidents were bound to happen. In the three years since Richmond introduced the system of electric carsmore than a hundred other cities have introduced it; and a hundred more are putting it in, I suppose, at this present moment."
"We'll ride to-morrow in one of the new cars, Harriet," said Grandma.
"Goody," said Harriet, "I love to ride in them. I'd like to ride on Mr. Edison's own electric railway, and go forty miles an hour."
"I don't doubt you would, puss," said her father, "but I think he is not using that at all now. He considers the electric railway a success and he is working now on something which his friends say will make it possible to run a horseless carriage without the help of either rails or a trolley."
"Oh, surely that never can be, John," said Grandma.
"I don't know. I should have said the same thing ten years ago about a horseless street car, I think. Edison's friends remind us that first it was the horse without the carriage, then it was the horse and the carriage, and now they say it is surely going to be the carriage without the horse. Wonders do not seem to cease; it may come true."
That night about midnight there was a splintering crash which Grandma thought was only a short distance from her window. Something had certainly happened in the street, but there was no outcry and all was still again in a few minutes afterthe crash. Grandma could not explain it, but it did not worry her and she went to sleep again.
Very early in the morning she was wakened again by unusual noises on her side of the house. Going to the window she was surprised to see an electric car across the gutter, stopped apparently in its course by a broken telegraph pole. How had it come there? It seemed to have come down the track on the hill opposite, and then to have come without any track at all straight across the street at the foot of the hill until it crashed into the pole. The front of the car was considerably broken. It had evidently run into the pole with force enough to snap that off short and spoil the front of the car.
Grandma watched with interest the crew which had been sent out to get the injured car back again on the track and take it to the car barn before most people were stirring. They had a smaller car to which they securely fastened the runaway car. Then the little service car pulled the runaway out of the gutter, across the street, and on to the track once more. The last Grandma saw of the wrecked car it was at the top of the hill still being pulled along by the other car.
"There's no question of power," said Grandma to herself. "One small car can run along with a big car trailing after it as easily as if it were alone. There is only one question left in my mind, and thatis the question of control of the power. To see a big car right across the gutter surely does not look as if the power were under control."
At breakfast Grandma told what she had heard and seen.
"Do you know what made the car run away?" she asked her son.
"Yes, I went out to the street last night after the crash and found out. There was just one man out there and he didn't feel very much like talking, but he did finally tell me what had happened. The man I found was the conductor."
"What had become of the motorman? Was he hurt?" asked Mrs. Lewis quickly.
"Nobody was hurt, and nothing was injured except the pole, and the front of the car, and the conductor's feelings. It seems that on the last trip last evening there was nobody on the car except the conductor and the motorman, and so, though it is against the rules, the conductor offered to let the motorman get off when they reached his home, and to take the car himself up to the end of the line and then back a little way to the car barn. His own home is close by the barn. All went well until the new driver was reaching the end of the line just opposite us. Then the trolley slipped off and the car came to a standstill. The conductor stepped off to put the trolley back in place, and he easilyand quickly swung it back where it belonged, when—Great Scott!—the car sailed off and left him! Went to the end of the rails and then had momentum enough to roll straight across the street plump into the pole."
"What made it go?" asked Harriet, completely mystified.
Harriet was not the only one of those present who was puzzled, and they all listened very carefully when Mr. Lewis said, "Because the conductor forgot to shut off the motor when he left the car. As there wasn't any power on when he stepped off, naturally he felt no need of shutting it off, but, unfortunately for him, there was plenty of power as soon as the trolley was on again."
Harriet began to laugh.
"I see! I see! How easy it was to start a real runaway! Nothing to do but to put the trolley on when everything was right for the car to go ahead."
"Exactly," said her father.
"How surprised that poor conductor must have felt," said Grandma.
"How mortified he must have felt," said Mamma.
"He must have felt the way I did when I left the water running and flooded the bathroom," said Harriet sadly.
"I think he had all those feelings," said Mr. Lewis, "judging from what he said last night."
"Well, it proves there's power enough to run a car even without smooth rails," said Grandma. "And perhaps it proves it is well controlled if it runs the car straight ahead even when there is nobody aboard to drive it."
"I hope this strange introduction to electric cars won't make any difference about your enjoying your ride to-day, Mother," said Mr. Lewis.
"Difference? Why should it? There won't be any more conductors taking the place of motormen to-day, I know," said Grandma.
"Probably not," replied Mr. Lewis, laughing.
"I'm perfectly satisfied with the way the car behaved," said Grandma. "We'll ride and ride to-day, Harriet."
And ride and ride they surely did. Grandma liked the motion and she was interested in all the details of running the car, even in how the whistle was operated, and how the end of the trolley was connected to the car.
"My introduction to electric cars may have been peculiar," said Grandma that night, "but my acquaintance thus far is entirely satisfactory. I really think I know how they are run and I shouldn't wonder if I could run one as well as the conductor on the car last night."
"If you let the motorman get off and you run the car for him, you won't get off to put the trolley onunless you have shut off the motor, will you, Grandma?" asked Harriet.
Everybody laughed to think how the car had run away and left the astonished conductor in the road unable to stop it; but Grandma said, "Runaways or no runaways, the electric car is the marvel of the age. It does not seem as if the mind of man could devise anything more wonderful than this harnessing of electricity; but yet it may be that Harriet will sometime ride in one of the horseless carriages her father spoke of yesterday. If they ever do have such things of course they'll be very, very dangerous, but I do wish"—and everybody knew what Grandma was going to wish—"that I could have just one ride in one myself."