—Automobile is a dreadful word, and the French ought to be ashamed of it, for to inconvenient length it adds an inadequacy of signification that amounts almost or quite to inaccuracy, and therefore it does not deserve a place in the most exact of modern languages.  However, the French, thanks to their magnificent roads, already have "automobiles" as an every-day, practical means of transportation, while our "horseless carriages" are little better than toys to excite curiosity.  Still, they ought to invent a better name.  A steamboat or a railway train is as "automobile" as are the new road wagons.