CHAPTER TWO THE MACHINE USED.
MAKING READY TO START The machine was just an ordinary twelve hundred dollar single-cylinder American machine, with neither improvements nor attachments to especially strengthen it for a long tour; and it had seen constant service since January without any return to the shop for repairs.
It was rated eight and one-half horse-power; but, as every one knows, American machines are overrated as a rule, while foreign machines are greatly underrated.

A twelve horse-power American machine may mean not more than eight or ten; a twelve horse-power French machine, with its four cylinders, means not less than sixteen.
The foreign manufacturer appreciates the advantage of having it said that his eight horse-power machine will run faster and climb better than the eight horsepower machine of a rival maker; hence the tendency to increase the power without changing the nominal rating.

The American manufacturer caters to the demand of his customers for machines of high power by advancing the nominal rating quite beyond the power actually developed.
But already things are changing here, and makers show a disposition to rate their machines low, for the sake of astonishing in performance.

A man dislikes to admit his machine is rated at forty horse-power and to acknowledge defeat by a machine rated at twenty, when the truth is that each machine is probably about thirty.
The tendency at the present moment is decidedly towards the French type,--two or four cylinders placed in front.
In the construction of racing-cars and high-speed machines for such roads as they have on the other side, we have much to learn from the French,--and we have been slow in learning it.

The conceit of the American mechanic amounts often to blind stubbornness, but the ease with which the foreign machines have passed the American in all races on smooth roads has opened the eyes of our builders; the danger just now is that they will go to the other extreme and copy too blindly.
In the hands of experts, the foreign racing-cars are the most perfect road locomotives yet devised; for touring over American roads in the hands of the amateur they are worse than useless; and even experts have great difficulty in running week in and week out without serious breaks and delays.