THE FIRST CARS 59 



were painfully missed. There had not yet been time 

 sufficient for the evolution of the typical motor-car 

 body. 



With the combined strategy of a Napoleon, the 

 patience of Job, and the strength of Samson, the guests 

 were at length piloted through the crowd and inducted 

 into their seats, and the " procession "— which, it was 

 sternly ordained, was not to be a " race ' —set out. 



The President of the Motor-car Club, Harry J. 

 Lawson, since convicted of fraud and sentenced to 

 some months' imprisonment, led the way in his pilot- 

 car, bearing a purple-and-gold banner, more or less 

 suitably inscribed, himself habited in a strange 

 costume, something between that of a yachtsman and 

 the conductor of a Hungarian band. 



Reigate was reached at 12.30 by the foremost car, 

 through twentv miles of crowded country, when rain 

 descended once more upon the hapless day. and late 

 arrivals splashed through in all the majesty of mud. 



The honours of the occasion belong to the little 

 Bollee three-wheeler, of a type long since obsolete. 

 The inventor, disregarding all rules and times, started 

 at 11.30, and, making no stoj) at Reigate, drove on to 

 Brighton, which he reached in the record time of two 

 hours fifty-five minutes. The President's car was 

 fourth, in seven hours twenty-two minutes thirty 

 seconds. 



At Preston Park, on the Brighton boundary, the 

 Mayor was to have welcomed the procession, which, 

 headed by the President, was to proceed triumphantly 

 into the town. A huge crowd assembled under the 

 dripping elms and weeping skies, and there, at five 

 o'clock, in the light of the misty lamps, stood and 

 vibrated that presidential equipage and its banner 

 with the strange device. By five o'clock only three 

 other ears had arrived ; and so, wet and miserable, 

 they, the Mayor and Council, and the mounted police 

 all splashed into Brighton amid a howling gale. 



The rest should be silence, for no one ever knew 

 the number of cars that completed the journey. Some 



