Well, the bird says so far correct; but that wasn't enough, and he guessed we better begin at the more fundamental parts and would I just step inside?

Well, it seems this auto school undertakes to teach you everything about a car from the paint on the body to the appendix, or magneto, as it is called, in twenty lessons; which is like trying to teach the Teatime Tango Trot, with three hand-springs and twenty whirls round your partner's neck, by mail for five dollars. Which is to say it can't be done.

First off, the instructor hands you a bunch of yellow papers with a lot of typewriting on[Pg 41] them—twenty sheets in all, or one per lesson, and all you got to do is learn them good and then put into practice what you learn; and after that what you can't do to a car would fill a book!

[Pg 41]

Well, after you grab this sheaf of stage bank notes you look at number one and follow the bird that's teaching you round the room while he reels it off. I guess the idea of you holding the paper is to check him up if he makes a mistake. Anyways, this bird let me in among a flock of busted-looking pieces of machinery and begun talking fast. At first, I didn't get him at all; but when I got sort of used to it I realized he was saying something like this:

"The crank shaft is a steel drop-forging having arms extending from center of shaft according to number of cylinders. It is used to change the reciprocating movement of the piston into a rotary motion of the flywheel; it has a starting handle at one end and the flywheel at the other, as you observe. We will now pass on to the exhaust manifold, which is generally constructed of cast iron; it conducts the burned gases from the exhaust valve . . ."

"Hold on!" I says. "Exhaust is right! I'm[Pg 42] exhausted this minute. If you don't mind I'd like to sit down and talk sense, instead of listening to a phonograph monologue in a foreign language."

[Pg 42]

The instructor bird seemed sort of winded by this; but he got a couple of chairs and pretty soon we was sitting in a quiet corner talking like we'd both been on the same circuit for five years.

"Now listen here, brother," I says real earnest; "I want to learn this stuff, and learn it right! And I want you to stick by me and see me through, same as you would any male man that come in here to learn to be a chauffeur. Now take it easy and make me get 

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