Soon an awful jade as if run away from a knackery, also other audience uvidat. People laughed, surprised, asked, were indignant. How this horse could get here? Who allowed such unprecedented mockery? What madman possesses it? You look: it it becomes impudent in the first row with the best racers of morning… The person in the cylinder waves a tag. Copper pipes of regimental orchestra glint in the sun and rend the air march sounds. The start is given, and… the most extraordinary begins here, fantastic…

The boy jockey in a red print shirt low bends to a back of a horse and strong squeezes a rychazhok on saddle onions. At the same moment the jade begins to move legs with such speed that it seems the fantastic centipede rushing a whirlwind on a hippodrome. The best prize-winning horses did not manage to depart from the starting line on three-four cases as the strakhovidny jade ran all over a circle, broke off a breast a tape at the finish, without stopping, rushed around two more times and, at last, stopped as driven, having low hung the head with the drooped lip; at the same time something several times slapped as a cracker. The jade won, and its owner had to take a dizzy prize.

Minute thousands of the viewers were in catalepsy, and in following the hippodrome turned into the bubbling volcano. People went mad, shouted, swung hands, hysterical squealed. Around a jade the bawling crowd quickly gathered. The indignant shouts were heard:

– Deception! Fraud! Down with!

– You watch, under a belly the motor…

– Size about a cigar box…

– And thin levers are attached to legs.

– Who owner of this jade?

– To kill! To tear to pieces it! Where it?

– Here it, in a hat… the inventor Wagner…

– Though physicist, and swindler. Beat him!.

– Misters! – tried to outvoice crowd of people in a hat. – Calm down. I did not put on the jade. I was not going to beat you… Also wanted only…

Shouts of indignation muffled its voice. Over a hat fists, umbrellas, canes rose. It is unknown, than it would come to an end if Wagner did not lift the sphere which brightly sparkled in the sun size about billiard.

– Bomb! – he screamed. The crowd in horror jumped aside. The inventor disappeared.

Such is there was an event described in the magazine. I became interested in Wagner, found for him and, having got acquainted, started talking about a case on a hippodrome. The young inventor hopelessly waved a hand.

– My next nonsense. Nonsense. How many times I promised «to go not that street» – not to rasshibat a forehead a wall. And here the next cone … – And it rubbed a forehead on which really there was a cone. – Donkikhotstvo.

– It could be worse – having burst out laughing, I told. – You were saved by resourcefulness. But about what wall and about what donkikhotstvo you speak?

– About a wall of stagnancy, dullness, conservatism of our government and our public. We hopelessly lagged behind in the technician from Europe and America. We still did not leave a plow. Fundamentals of our power still are natural horse backs. From all this it is possible to come to a despair. I cannot reconcile with it, well and still donkikhotstvy. I take each convenient and inconvenient opportunity to convince these people that the small motor can be stronger than a big horse that the self-moving crew will overtake any trotter. – Wagner’s eyes derisively blinked the eyes. – This jade whom you saw, not live is the automatic machine, a mechanical toy. They did not even notice it. Saw only a motor and levers. Isn’t that so, it is well made? – cheerfully he asked, having seen the amazement mixed with admiration on my face. After this he sighed. – I did not manage even to explain. They are mad about money, about the totalizator… Villains! They suspected even that I just wanted to beat them. However we will turn this sad page and somewhat quicker we will forget about it – Wagner already with usual good nature told. – I am occupied now by one fascinating idea… one invention … – And it rubbed the cone on a forehead again.