'A Beautiful and Consoling Thought'

The only speeding ticket I have ever received was issued by a police officer in Bellevue, Wa., about fifteen years ago. He clocked me doing thirty-five on a street with a posted speed limit of twenty-five mph. It’s almost embarrassing, so pitiful an infraction. I was careless, not in a hurry. I’m virtually religious about obeying the speed limit. As a reporter, I once rode in a police cruiser in Indiana with a sheriff’s deputy who was chasing a hit-and-run driver. I peered over her shoulder and the speedometer seemed to read about 130 mph. She later confirmed her top speed was 133 mph. She caught the guy and I nearly soiled myself. Any residual fantasy about imitating James Dean had vanished. On April 19, 1936, Max Beerbohm broadcast a BBC radio talk titled “Speed.” He begins with an anecdote about the poet W.E. Henley (1849-1903), who was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis at age twelve and his left leg was amputated below the knee. Last year at my fifty-fifth high school reunion, I…