DRIVING IX A FOG. 97 



possible for anybody to know this unless he is blessed 

 with sight that will permit him to see almost as well 

 of a night as during the day. I have driven tandem 

 when it has been so dark and foggy that I have 

 not been able to see beyond my wheeler's head ; 

 although my leader was there I have not been able 

 to see him, and, under these circumstances, I have 

 felt like Marcus Curtius, the hero of one of the old 

 legends of Rome, who threw himself fully armed 

 into a chasm which had opened in the Forum, and 

 which the AuQ-urs declared could onlv be closed 

 by casting into it the greatest treasure of the city. 

 I should qualify this statement by saying that the 

 descent into that unfathomable gulf must have appeared 

 to Marcus Curtius when in the act of plunging therein 

 a rather speculative proceeding ; in fact, it was quite 

 impossible for him to say on what kind of journey 

 he was embarking. Had it occurred at the present 

 time he would have been run in by a policeman for 

 attempting to commit suicide. I believe this hero 

 of romance at the moment he took this header was 

 on horseback, which was rather hard upon the horse, 

 who did not share his rider's fanaticism. 



As with Marcus Curtius, so it is with coachmen 

 who drive a team in a dense foQ- on a dark nis^ht. It 

 is, to say the least of it, rather a speculative proceed- 

 ing, since they cannot always tell where they are 

 journeying. Mr. Harris says that an old coachman 

 once told him that, with a ccach and four horses, he 

 had driven over eight donkeys in the course of his 

 life, all lying out in the middle of the road. I re- 

 member driving once in Sussex with a tandem, when I 

 got off the road, and found myself journeying across a 

 common. I had no lamps, and not knowing how to 



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