In 1891 when Harriet Lewis wrote just before her grandmother's annual visit:

"We have something in Portland this year that really will surprise you, Grandma," all the family laughed over her grandmother's answer.

"If you mean the electric cars which I have been reading about in the Press," so her grandmother's letter ran, "remember that I have already seen street cars running up and down hill in San Francisco without any horses to draw them, and that it won't be any more surprising to see them running all alone in Portland, even if it is electricity this time which makes them go."

"Can't astonish Grandma, can we?" said Harriet's father, smiling.

It certainly was hard to do so. Grandma had always been a traveler. She was born in Bath, Maine, in the days when Maine was famous for its ship building, and Maine sailing vessels went all around the world. Her father had been a sea captain and Grandma had been to China with him before she was eighteen; her husband also had been a sea captain and she had been around the world twice with him. Grandma had seen so much and was always so interested in what was going on in the world that when she went to Portland to visit her oldest son the family there used to say jokingly:

"We must find something new to show Grandma or she won't feel that she has been anywhere."

They had all expected Grandma to think it as wonderful as they did that electricity could take the place of horses, and had expected her to be very anxious to see the new cars of which so much had been written. Evidently she did not think them very much ahead of the cable cars.

"Don't be disappointed, Harriet," said Mr. Lewis to his little ten-year old daughter, who was Grandma's namesake. "Wait until Grandma has seen the new cars; perhaps then she will think it as marvelous as we do that electricity can be harnessed to make these cars slide along the rails. She never has believed that electric cars would be a success."

"I remember last year when she was here," said Harriet's mother, turning to the little girl's father, "how she used to say, 'I don't like horse cars on these Maine hills. You ought to have cable cars. They are the only proper things for hills!' and how you used to say, 'Wait until next year, Mother, and you shall see something better than cable cars.'"

"She always answered, I recall," added Mr. Lewis, "'John, never in my lifetime or yours will electricity be anything but a mystery and a danger. It may be used to some extent for lighting, but, mark my words, it can never be made to run heavily loaded cars. It is too absurd to consider.'"

When Grandma reached Portland, Harriet and her father met her at the station, and drove her home behind steady old Prince, who had drawn the family carriage for years. As they jogged along on the way to the house they met an electric car.

"I really don't see why it should go, but it is plain that it does go. If they keep on going for another twenty-four hours, I am going to have a ride in one to-morrow morning," said Grandma.

"Oh Mother, Mother!" exclaimed the son. "You do like to try new things, don't you? Here I drove Prince to the station just so that you wouldn't have to ride in one of these cars until you became used to seeing them slide along driven by what you call that dangerous fluid."

"Well, I'm going to ride once anyway. I've always tried all the different ways of getting about that I could. Why, I was the very first person from our town to ride in a street car in Boston. That was way back in 1856 in a little bobbing horse car drawn by two horses harnessed tandem. Lots of people then made fun of the little cars, I remember. They said the omnibus was better. They used to have races between car and omnibus sometimes to prove which was better. How the passengers on the one ahead would cheer! In the spring, when the snow was going off, the omnibus, which would still be on runners, would get stuck in the mud and the car would win; in the winter, if there was drifting snow, the car would get stuck and the omnibus would go gliding by with sleigh bells ringing and passengers waving their hands. Oh, it was quite exciting, but the omnibuses were not used a great while after the cars were introduced, as the cars were really more comfortable, more convenient, and could make better time."

Several times during the first day of her visit Grandma exclaimed, "I am thankful not to see any poor horses straining to draw those cars!"

Pity for the horses had always interfered with Grandma's enjoyment in riding on the horse cars. When she and Harriet had been on their accustomed rides, Harriet always had taken pains to tell when a third horse was added to the usual pair to help draw a car up a hill.

"Now he's on, Grandma," she would say when the car stopped at the foot of a hard hill and a boy brought up the horse which had been waiting there and hooked the heavy tugs to the whiffletree bar so that the third horse could run along beside the others, although just outside the rails. "It's a big horse," she would often add.

But even this had not satisfied Grandma. She had been in San Francisco when the cable cars were first put in use and she believed them the only car suitable for a hilly city.

"You ought to have the cable cars," she had said many a time. However, before she had watched the electric cars a half day Grandma went so far as to say, "If you could be sure there would be no danger from electricity and be sure of power enough I don't know why these wouldn't do just as well as the cable cars."

"Tell me about the cable cars, won't you, Grandma? What makes them go?" asked Harriet, now old enough to be interested in the difference between the systems.

"The cable makes them go," answered her grandmother. "It is an endless iron chain which the engine at the central station keeps running all the time. It travels between the rails in an open channel or groove just below ground. The car is carried along by being fastened to this cable. What is it you call the driver of your new cars—a motorman? The man who drives a cable car is called a gripman. It is his business to work the 'grip,' a stout iron contrivance which must catch hold of the cable when the car is to be carried along and must be loosened when the car is to be stopped."

"Is San Francisco the only city where they have those cars?" asked Harriet.

"Oh, no," answered Grandma. "They have them now in several of the other large cities. San Francisco was the first city to have them. The hills there are so steep that it was out of the question to use horses. Something had to be invented, and Andrew S. Hallidie planned this system which has been used successfully ever since 1873."

"Weren't there any people in those days who thought the cable cars were dangerous, Mother?" asked Harriet's father slyly.

"Oh, dear me, yes," replied his mother. "The gripman himself lost his courage, I remember, on one of the very first trips and stopped his car at the top of his first steep hill. He got off the car and said that, as he had a wife and children, he did not think it would be right for him to take the car down such a hill. The passengers said it was not a case of right or wrong but a case of being scared, and they insisted upon his getting on again and taking them to their journey's end."

"There goes another electric car, Grandma!" said Harriet who was looking out the window. "It goes a good deal faster than a horse car, doesn't it?"

"I should think it did," answered Grandma, "In contrast with travel on horse cars, going as fast as that must seem like flying. How can it be possible to get power enough to drive a big car like that!"

"It comes right along that overhead wire," answered Harriet's father.

"Oh, yes, I know that from what I have read," continued Grandma. "And it is conducted to the car along that long iron rod which runs from the overhead wire to the car. What is it you call that?"

"The trolley," said Mr. Lewis.

"Then what really happens after the electricity has reached the car?"

"This current of electricity runs to those cylinders in front of the motorman. Then it is where it can be controlled. By the turning of a crank the motorman can turn on the power to start the motor and drive the car ahead, or he can shut it off and make the car stand still. Just as steam power turns the wheels of the locomotive, so electric power turns the wheels of these cars."

"It is very mysterious after all," said Grandma.

"It certainly is," assented her son. "Oliver Wendell Holmes says it is like witchcraft. Have you read his poem which says:

Grandma and Harriet laughed.

"How fast are these cars going?" asked Grandma.

"About ten miles an hour including the stops. Probably the rate without stops is about fifteen miles," answered Mr. Lewis.

"There never could be power enough in electricity to drive the car much faster than that, I suppose?" said Grandma.

"Yes, they have already gone considerably faster," replied her son. "I was reading only last night that back in 1880 when Thomas Edison first began his experiments with electricity as a motive power on his own private track at Menlo Park, he drove his little electric train more than twice as fast. In June 1880, Grosvenor Lowry wrote, 'Have spent part of a day at Menlo, and all is glorious. I have ridden at forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway—and we ran off the track.'"

"It is dangerous after all, isn't it?" commented Grandma.

"Most people do not think so. That was when they were experimenting and of course accidents were bound to happen. In the three years since Richmond introduced the system of electric cars more than a hundred other cities have introduced it; and a hundred more are putting it in, I suppose, at this present moment."

"We'll ride to-morrow in one of the new cars, Harriet," said Grandma.

"Goody," said Harriet, "I love to ride in them. I'd like to ride on Mr. Edison's own electric railway, and go forty miles an hour."

"I don't doubt you would, puss," said her father, "but I think he is not using that at all now. He considers the electric railway a success and he is working now on something which his friends say will make it possible to run a horseless carriage without the help of either rails or a trolley."

"Oh, surely that never can be, John," said Grandma.

"I don't know. I should have said the same thing ten years ago about a horseless street car, I think. Edison's friends remind us that first it was the horse without the carriage, then it was the horse and the carriage, and now they say it is surely going to be the carriage without the horse. Wonders do not seem to cease; it may come true."

That night about midnight there was a splintering crash which Grandma thought was only a short distance from her window. Something had certainly happened in the street, but there was no outcry and all was still again in a few minutes after the crash. Grandma could not explain it, but it did not worry her and she went to sleep again.

Very early in the morning she was wakened again by unusual noises on her side of the house. Going to the window she was surprised to see an electric car across the gutter, stopped apparently in its course by a broken telegraph pole. How had it come there? It seemed to have come down the track on the hill opposite, and then to have come without any track at all straight across the street at the foot of the hill until it crashed into the pole. The front of the car was considerably broken. It had evidently run into the pole with force enough to snap that off short and spoil the front of the car.

Grandma watched with interest the crew which had been sent out to get the injured car back again on the track and take it to the car barn before most people were stirring. They had a smaller car to which they securely fastened the runaway car. Then the little service car pulled the runaway out of the gutter, across the street, and on to the track once more. The last Grandma saw of the wrecked car it was at the top of the hill still being pulled along by the other car.

"There's no question of power," said Grandma to herself. "One small car can run along with a big car trailing after it as easily as if it were alone. There is only one question left in my mind, and that is the question of control of the power. To see a big car right across the gutter surely does not look as if the power were under control."

At breakfast Grandma told what she had heard and seen.

"Do you know what made the car run away?" she asked her son.

"Yes, I went out to the street last night after the crash and found out. There was just one man out there and he didn't feel very much like talking, but he did finally tell me what had happened. The man I found was the conductor."

"What had become of the motorman? Was he hurt?" asked Mrs. Lewis quickly.

"Nobody was hurt, and nothing was injured except the pole, and the front of the car, and the conductor's feelings. It seems that on the last trip last evening there was nobody on the car except the conductor and the motorman, and so, though it is against the rules, the conductor offered to let the motorman get off when they reached his home, and to take the car himself up to the end of the line and then back a little way to the car barn. His own home is close by the barn. All went well until the new driver was reaching the end of the line just opposite us. Then the trolley slipped off and the car came to a standstill. The conductor stepped off to put the trolley back in place, and he easily and quickly swung it back where it belonged, when—Great Scott!—the car sailed off and left him! Went to the end of the rails and then had momentum enough to roll straight across the street plump into the pole."

"What made it go?" asked Harriet, completely mystified.

Harriet was not the only one of those present who was puzzled, and they all listened very carefully when Mr. Lewis said, "Because the conductor forgot to shut off the motor when he left the car. As there wasn't any power on when he stepped off, naturally he felt no need of shutting it off, but, unfortunately for him, there was plenty of power as soon as the trolley was on again."

Harriet began to laugh.

"I see! I see! How easy it was to start a real runaway! Nothing to do but to put the trolley on when everything was right for the car to go ahead."

"Exactly," said her father.

"How surprised that poor conductor must have felt," said Grandma.

"How mortified he must have felt," said Mamma.

"He must have felt the way I did when I left the water running and flooded the bathroom," said Harriet sadly.

"I think he had all those feelings," said Mr. Lewis, "judging from what he said last night."

"Well, it proves there's power enough to run a car even without smooth rails," said Grandma. "And perhaps it proves it is well controlled if it runs the car straight ahead even when there is nobody aboard to drive it."

"I hope this strange introduction to electric cars won't make any difference about your enjoying your ride to-day, Mother," said Mr. Lewis.

"Difference? Why should it? There won't be any more conductors taking the place of motormen to-day, I know," said Grandma.

"Probably not," replied Mr. Lewis, laughing.

"I'm perfectly satisfied with the way the car behaved," said Grandma. "We'll ride and ride to-day, Harriet."

And ride and ride they surely did. Grandma liked the motion and she was interested in all the details of running the car, even in how the whistle was operated, and how the end of the trolley was connected to the car.

"My introduction to electric cars may have been peculiar," said Grandma that night, "but my acquaintance thus far is entirely satisfactory. I really think I know how they are run and I shouldn't wonder if I could run one as well as the conductor on the car last night."

"If you let the motorman get off and you run the car for him, you won't get off to put the trolley on unless you have shut off the motor, will you, Grandma?" asked Harriet.

Everybody laughed to think how the car had run away and left the astonished conductor in the road unable to stop it; but Grandma said, "Runaways or no runaways, the electric car is the marvel of the age. It does not seem as if the mind of man could devise anything more wonderful than this harnessing of electricity; but yet it may be that Harriet will sometime ride in one of the horseless carriages her father spoke of yesterday. If they ever do have such things of course they'll be very, very dangerous, but I do wish"—and everybody knew what Grandma was going to wish—"that I could have just one ride in one myself."