XIVA NEW USE FOR HORSES
I
I met Scott Bindley the other day. Scott is a great schemer. I think he must be related on his mother’s side to Colonel Sellers. At any rate, there isn’t a day in the year that he doesn’t think of some idea that should interest capital, although capital, somehow, fails to become interested. As soon as he saw me he said:
“Got a great scheme. Small fortune in it for the right parties.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Come into some cheap lunch-place, and I’ll blow myself off to a meal and give you the particulars.”
So it came to pass that we were soonseated in a restaurant which, if cheap, is clean—a combination rarer than need be.
“You’ve probably noticed that the more automobiles there are in use, the more breakdowns there are.”
I could but admit that it was so.
“Well, what is more useless than a broken-down motor-wagon?”
I would have suggested “Two,” but Bindley hates warmed-up jokes, so I refrained and told him that I gave it up.
“It isn’t a conundrum,” said he, irritably. “Nothing in the world is more useless than a broken-down motor. There are some vehicles of a box-like pattern that can be used as hen-houses when they have outlived their initial usefulness, but who wants a hen-house on Fifth Avenue, corner of Twenty-fifth Street, or any other place where a motor vehicle gives out? The more I thought this over, the more I felt that something was needed to make a disabled automobile of some use, and I saw that the man who would supply that something could make money hand over fist. So I devoted a great deal of timeto the subject, and at last I hit it. Horses.”
“Horses what?” said I.
“Why, horses to supply the motive power. Horses are getting to be a drug in the market, and can be bought dirt-cheap. That being the case, I am going to interest capitalists in the scheme, and then we will buy up a lot of horses and distribute them at different points in the city. Then, when a man is out in his automobile and breaks down, he will telephone to the nearest station and get a horse. This can easily be hitched to the motor by a contrivance that I intend to patent, and then the horse can drag the wagon to the nearest power-house, where it can be restocked with electricity, or gas, or naphtha, or whatever is wanted. Isn’tit a great scheme? Why, sir, I can see in the future the plan enlarged so that people will always take a horse along with them when they go a-motoring, and, if anything happens, there they are with the good old horse handy. Talk about the horseless age! Why, horses are just entering upon a new sphere of usefulness.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on: “I tell you that if I can get the holders of automobile stock to coöperate with me I’ll stop eating at places like this.”
A look of such sweet content overspread his features that I told him to put me down for ten shares as soon as his company was organized. That was a month ago, and I haven’t gotten my stock yet. But motors are becoming stalled every day.