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J VOL. LXI.— No. 9. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York 
THE AUTOMOBILE AND THE ROAD. 
At the present time the big high-power and high- 
geared autcmobile, considered as a vehicle of passage 
holds Its chief place among the belongings of fhe 
wealthy. It is in every particular essentially a vehicle of 
the classes who can afford to spend their money liberally 
The first cost of it is prohibitive to the man of ordinai'y 
means, and to the man whose means are above the or- 
dinary and who could afford the first cost, the second 
T would likely prohibit its owner- 
ship. While in theory it only costs about two cents a 
mile to run an automobile, in practice it costs nearer to 
.ten times as much. Therefore, during a long time to 
come, in ownership it undoubtedly will be confined to the 
cultured, vyealthy class of leisure, to whom the phrase 
iwblesse obhge has always been considered as bein- 
specially applicable. Yet, in the relatively few years in 
Which automobiles have been in use, there is a well 
grounded public resentment over the lawless manner in 
vvhich they, as a rule, are driven. The average chauffeur 
has a contemptuous disregard for anything that runs 
counter to his caprice or inclination. To him the average 
pedestrian or horseman is as naught. Legal restrictions 
•as to the hmit of speed are violated openly and flagrantly 
at every opportunity. If a man is bowled over the 
chauffeur turns on more power and escapes expeditiously 
il a horse takes fright, overturning the carriage or run- 
ning away in consequence, the average chauffeur heeds it 
not. He speeds away with a conscious feeling of con- 
tempt, power and immunity. The rights of other people 
are, as a rule, wholly disregarded. It is true that all 
Who act as motormen to automobiles do not do so • but 
It IS equally true that the majority do violate constantly 
all the rules of the road, statutory and common, and all 
:he rules of common courtesy as well. One need but to 
station himself at any of the great thoroughfiires in New 
i:ork, or its suburbs, to obtain ocular proof of this 
•itatement. On some of the best and most attractive 
•oads m the country adjacent to the city it has been 
ound necessary to provide special officers to confine the 
ise of the automobiles within certain safe legal limits 
ir to arrest the chauffeurs who were defiant and refrac- 
oxy. The man with the automobile has no more ri^rhts 
n the public highway than has the humblest man vvith 
le humblest wheelbarrow. A continued disregard of 
ublic rights on the part of automobilists is sure to work 
ecided harm to automobile interests in the day 
n Itself automobiling is one of the best of pleasures- 
anducted recklessly, it is one of the most irritating and 
angerous of public nuisances. For the good of them- 
ilves and for the good of the sport in general, those who 
3W recklessly disregard law and property when running 
leir machines, should reform. The public is slow to act 
Jt, when once thoroughly aroused, it is likely to over- 
t. The people in their might can take active means to 
iforce their restrictions, and they can further mitigate 
e evil by reducing the temptation to maintain it. The 
an who has a 30 or 40 horse-power machine is con- 
intly tempted to pass everything else in sight. If called 
•on to justify the use of such a high-powered machine 
» the common highways of the people, he would find ex- 
ime difficulty in doing so. The public could force a re- 
iction of speed by limiting the power of the machines 
owed on the public highways. This is advanced as a 
ffgestion of what might happen if the abuse of the 
rhways by chauffeurs shall grow in the future 
Useful from the viewpoint of utility or pleasure, 
devotees should seek to popularize it instead of mak- 
It a subject of public menace and odium. And those 
10 practice it, being of great wealth and high station 
Juld avoid fostering the greater class prejudice of the 
iltitude directed against the smaller class who should 
T keep in mind the phrase noblesse oblige. 
The English language is not very old, and the spoken 
and written tongue of to-day differs strangely from that 
oi five hundred years ago. while a thousand years ago 
there was no English language. Similarly the tongue 
spoken m the United States differs in some degree from 
hat_ used in Great Britain, and the speech of each coun- 
ry IS changing from day to day. To each are constantly 
being contributed words from other languages. Every 
nation of Europe, but above all the German and the 
Latm tongues, are adding daily new terms, which, while 
strange at first, soon become incorporated in the lan- 
gt'.age, and take their places in the dictionaries and finally 
in the best literature. New terms, not from foreign 
tongues, are continually being coined, and the slang of 
to-day may become the colloquial speech of next year, 
and enter into the written language of ten years hence. 
In a new country like our own, made up of a hetero- 
geneous mixture of races, from each of which words are 
likely to be drawn, additions such as these come rapidly 
J o say nothing of the fact that the Americans of to-dav 
are made up of all the races of Europe with not a 
few from Asia, Africa and the islands of the western 
seas 2s the fact that both on the north and the south the 
Enghsh-speaking United States territory has long been 
rubbing agamst peoples speaking different tongues, and 
the further fact that gradually being incorporated into 
our body politic are many tribes of the native American 
race, which, while we sweep over, absorb and obliterate 
them, still leave their impress on us as a nation. 
Along the northern border of the United States the 
French have exercised an important influence on the 
spoken language , and in the same way on the south 
words of Spanish origin have come to be generally 
adopted and commonly used in writing as well as in 
speech. Words of Indian origin have come into common 
use and crowd our vocabulary, and it is not long since 
an eminent scholar, Prof. Alexander F. Chamberlain, of 
Clarke University, printed a list of 132 words now com- 
monly used, many of which are so familiar that it sur- 
prises us to learn that they have come to us from the 
red man. Of the foreign words which have become a 
part of the language spoken in the United States, very 
many have been given by outdoor men, by hunters, 
fishermen, cowmen, travelers in the wilds. 
It is in the West where, for neariy 300 years before 
men of English stock traversed it, the country was run 
over by the Spaniards, or in the Northwest, where the 
French trapper— the coureiir de bois~was for genera- 
tions pushing his way further and further from civiliza- 
tion, making friends with the natives, marrying their 
women, and rearing his "dusky brood," that the names 
of French and Spanish origin were chiefly applied, and 
occasionally such terms underwent curious transforma- 
tions. The French trapper, for example, called the dry 
dung of the buflFalo— often so useful as hid— bats de 
vaches, or cow wood, which the American, many years 
later, translated, retaining the sense, though the sound 
was too much for him, and called "buffalo chip." There 
IS no commoner word in the West than "cache," from the 
French cacher. Cache is used as a verb, to hide, or as a 
noun, meaning things hidden, or a place where things 
may be hidden. Another word very common in the 
Northwest is "cooly," properly, of course, "coulee," from 
the French couler, to flow, hence a ravine, a "draw," a 
place where water flows, a (dry) water course. 
Some of the most familiar Western words are of Span- 
ish origin. Every one is familiar with the term "cinch," 
from cincha, a girth. Cowmen commonly speak of the 
"caviya," the herd of horses, from the Spanish caballo. 
Caviya is pronounced in many ways in different places 
The term caballo, by the way, appears in a phonetic 
form in the familiar pseudonym of our contributor 
Cabia Blanco, or White Horse. 
An Indian word coming to us through the Spanish is 
the familiar "coyote," pronounced kai'ot, or koi o'ti ; the 
Aztec word was coyotl, meaning the little prairie wolf. 
Among the words which we have got directly from 
Indian tongues is "chipmunk," the little striped squirrel. 
Our word is from the Ojibwa term atchitamo, com- 
pounded of the two words acjiit, meaning "headfirst," and 
am, "mouth," and is given to the animal from its habit of 
running down trees head downward- The idea is ex- 
a 
pressed, if not exactly, at least nearly enough, in Long- 
fellow's lines m Hiawatha: 
"For hereafter and forever 
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, 
Tail-in-air, the boys shall call yotl." 
;'Pecan," the nut and tree, is another word of Indian 
origm, as is also "hickory." The pecan is a fruit of a 
species of hickory, and the Cree and Ojibwa word pakan, 
meaning nut or walnut, shows the derivation 
Of such words of foreign origin many have only a 
local application, and this fs especially true of certain 
subs antives adopted by the English-speaking rac. now 
mhab.ting the regions formeriy occupied by the peop?" 
.110 gave ,ne names. Some of these local terms ar^e 
hardly known out of the district where thev are used- 
o.hers have a very wide application. The term Adiron- 
clacks, from the name of a tribe of Indians once dwelling 
n or near the section to which the name is applied is 
known throughout the worid, and there are certain other 
Id • T ? ""''-"^'^ ^i^ni^can.., of which 
^o,.m, and words formed from it, is one of the best 
Known. 
By no means all the words adopted from foreign 
used" foVft"" " °' ^^"^ °f *em, 
b i ' naconvenient, pass out of common 
thmly-settled country, may be overwhelmed by a rush of 
new inhabitants, to whom they are unfamiliar, and who 
will substitute for them some better known word which 
will_ come into common use and be adopted by the fol- 
lowing generations. Something of this sort may well 
enough happen_ in certain portions of the West, where 
the o.d generation has died out, and its place is now be- 
ing taken by a multitude of settlers from the East, who 
wih brmg with them their own speech as well as their 
ways of hfe. A word formerly in common use in the 
Northwest, which is now rapidly being forgotten, is 
apiskmnore, a saddle blanket, usually of buffalo hide 
A word very familiar among the Canadian French, 
and much used wherever snowshoes are employed is 
oabtme, meaning a thong or string of leather, or per- 
haps, more exactly, of the skin of an animal. This word 
comes to us through the Canadian French, but is probably 
from the Mic Mac ababich, meaning string or cord 
Andrew Lang, poking fun at the Browning dubs and 
lennyson clubs, whose members assemble to read poetry 
together and try to find out what it means, avers that he 
would as soon think of taking part in the English fishing 
hZ-r^Tv ""'^^'"^^"^ shouting and 
hilarity 1 his is a matter of taste. Reading poetry and 
fishing both have their rewards, whether pursued in soli- 
ude or amid the crowd. The Browning clubs, though 
they may appear to an irreverent worid to verge on the 
dait, must find some compensation in their Browningiz- 
mg or they would not do it; and it is not to be gainsaid 
hat the fishermen who go in noisy flocks also find de- 
hght m their peculiar way of practicing the gentle art 
Fishing IS not of necessity a solitary pastime; it is not 
always a gentle" recreation. If quiet and solitude were 
essentials, the sport would be denied to hosts who partici- 
pate m It. Angling competitions are to be discouraged 
for the reason that the tendency of them is to cause the 
wanton waste of fish and the depletion of the parent 
stock of fish The element of competition in men is a 
quality which pervades most of our outdoor sports, from 
the sailing of the America's Cup race to the fishing of the 
solitary angler, whose ambition is to take a bigger fish 
to-day than his companion did yesterday. 
Florida fishing is so generally associated with winter 
that the summer resources of those waters are likely to 
be overlooked. As the population of the State is in- 
creasing the seashore is coming to be more and more 
a popular summer resort; and just now there comes from 
the East Coast reports of fishing which excels that of 
the winter months. The sea bass fishing at Ormond, 
Daytona Seabreeze, and other points is excellent; while 
the Halifax is yielding many tarpon, which, while smaller 
than the giants of the Atlantic and the Gulf, have the 
same game qualities. Thus the Florida angler finds a 
zest in his fishing not less in degree than that of the 
Maine trout waters or the Minnesota bass lakes 
