e for the best. I rather like the notion of the
diagonal foot-bridges. But why not Rows along the second stories as
they have them in Chester? I should be pretty sure of always getting
home alive if we had them. Now if I'm not telephoned for at a hospital
before I'm restored to consciousness, I think myself pretty lucky. And
yet it seems but yesterday, as the people used to say in the plays,
since I had a pride in counting the automobiles as I walked up the
Avenue. Once I got as high as twenty before I reached Fifty-ninth
Street. Now I couldn't count as many horse vehicles."

The elder sage mocked himself in a feeble laugh, but the younger tried
to be serious. "We don't realize the absolute change. Our streets are
not streets any more; they are railroad tracks with locomotives let
loose on them, and no signs up to warn people at the crossings. It's
pathetic to see the foot-passengers saving themselves, especially the
poor, pretty, high-heeled women, looking this way and that in their
fright, and then tottering over as fast as they can totter."

"Well, I should have said it was outrageous, humiliating, insulting,
once, but I don't any more; it would be no use."

"No; and so much depends upon the point of view. When I'm on foot I
feel all my rights invaded, but when I'm in a taxi it amuses me to see
the women escaping; and I boil with rage in being halted at every
other corner by the policeman with his new-fangled semaphore, and it's
"Go" and "Stop" in red and blue, and my taxi-clock going round all the
time and getting me in for a dollar when I thought I should keep
within seventy cents. Then I feel that pedestrians of every age and
sex ought to be killed."

"Yes, there's something always in the point of view; and there's some
comfort when you're stopped in your taxi to feel that they often _do_
get killed."

The sages laughed together, and the younger said: "I suppose when we
get aeroplanes in common use, there'll be annoying traffic
regulations, and policemen anchored out at intervals in the central
blue to enforce them. After all--"

What he was going to add in amplification cannot be known, for a
girlish voice, trying to sharpen itself from its native sweetness to a
conscientious severity, called to them as its owner swiftly advanced
upon the elder sage: "Now, see here, grandfather! This won't do at
all. You promised not to leave that bench by the Indian Hunter, and
here you are away down by the Falconer, and