Hair-raising escaped when ladies start an automobile
Friday, 06 August 2010 05:00
One hundred years ago: clippings from the newspapers of August 6, 1910.
Lindsay Post(July 5). The Post tells this tale of a lady motorist in Lindsay:
The daring venture of a party of young ladies to drive an automobile met surprising results, disconcerting not only to the would be chauffeurs, but to a couple of onlookers who were nearly run over.
While the gentlemen accustomed to driving the car were enquiring the direction to a nearby village, at the Lindsay garage, and had left the machine facing the river in the rear of the building at Kennedy’s wharf, one young lady, thinking it would be interesting to turn the motor ready for departure, touched the button and started the engine.
Now, as is well known, every car has three, or at least two speed gears, the lowest one being generally used for starting, and the engine gear happened to be put in mesh. So speeding the engine to a modest roar and touching the steering wheel gently, she dropped the clutch. In an instant the wheels slipped, and then like a flash the auto sped toward the river. Only a thin board partition barred the way. One lady jumped, the other clung to the car because she couldn’t let go.
But it didn’t go into the river. Luckily the flooring of the coal bin, through which they were rushing to the river, was rotten, and the wheels crashed through and could not climb the logs supporting it. Sullenly the car flung clouds of mud and dirt, but it could go no farther. It was just two yards from the river. Nothing except a pane of glass was cracked, but it took several people to get it back where it had started.
“Let George drive,” said one of the ladies, as she sadly seated herself.
MILITARY ETHICS
Guelph Herald (cited in Hamilton Spectator). “The height of absurdity has surely been reached by the decision of the Kingston Military College to cut out boxing. The latter is civilization personified compared to the ethics taught by any military college.”
NO NEED FOR OLD AGE
Victoria Colonist. Sixty-year-old Spokane, Washington Judge E.H. Sullivan believes he will live to age 120 and that in time, people will live for 400 or 500 years.
Judge Sullivan, said to be “as straight as a new arrow,” credits his physical and mental vigour to regular exercise, drinking lots of water and breathing clean air. He gives his formula for a long life:
“Barring accidents, if we take care of ourselves and don’t give up, we should live many years longer than we do at this time. Old age is nothing more than fear, ignorance and giving up. There is no need for old age in the body. Just keep the joints springy and the blood pounding through the veins and arteries and the body will renew. My rule is to drink more water than the foodstuffs I eat and walk as much as possible.”
A Google search failed to find how long Judge Sullivan lived.
CANDA’S HANGING LAWS
Hamilton Spectator. Capital punishment in Canada exposes a flaw in Michigan’s ban, opines the Spectator:
A man is being held by the Detroit authorities on a murder charge. He is also wanted in Chatham [Ontario] on a similar charge, and it is reported that the Detroit authorities will let Chatham have him first for the reason that there is no capital punishment in Michigan, and the Michiganders rather want to see this fellow strung up. It is pleasant to see so high a compliment paid to Canadian methods of justice, the more so for the reason that in paying it the Americans are condemning their own methods.