To arrest or even to halt an apparition moving at such speed was scarcely practicable.

A better way would be to erect across the roads solid gateways with which the flying machine must come in contact sooner or later, and be smashed into a thousand pieces.
"Nonsense!" declared the incredulous.

"This madman would know well how to circle around such obstructions." "And if necessary," added others, "the machine would leap over the barriers." "And if he is indeed the devil, he has, as a former angel, presumably preserved his wings, and so he will take to flight." But this last was but the suggestion of foolish old gossips who did not stop to study the matter.

For if the King of Hades possessed a pair of wings, why did he obstinately persist in running around on the earth at the risk of crushing his own subjects, when he might more easily have hurled himself through space as free as a bird.
Such was the situation when, in the last week of May, a fresh event occurred, which seemed to show that the United States was indeed helpless in the hands of some unapproachable monster.

And after the New World, would not the Old in its turn, be desecrated by the mad career of this remarkable automobilist?
The following occurrence was reported in all the newspapers of the Union, and with what comments and outcries it is easy to imagine.
A race was to be held by the automobile Club of Wisconsin, over the roads of that state of which Madison is the capital.