oon gets used to it, however, and
regards it as a matter of course. I could not but think how strange it
would look to see a couple of Sacramento or San Francisco hack-drivers
meet in some populous part of the town, and each one take off his hat
to the other, and, with a graceful flourish, make a courtly salaam; or
a pair of draymen stop their drays, get down leisurely, approach each
other in an attitude of impressive dignity, take off their hats, and
double themselves up before an admiring audience. They would certainly
be suspected in our rude country of poking fun at each other. I can
very well understand why butchers and chimney-sweeps should be polite,
since they are accustomed to scraping; and the custom looks
appropriate enough with many other classes, including barbers, who are
generally men of oily manners, and tailors and printers, who are
naturally given to forms; but with men whose business is intimately
associated with horse-flesh, I must say it has something of a
satirical aspect. Never in this world can I force myself to believe
that a hack-driver is in earnest in any thing short of his fare. Do
not understand me as casting any injurious reflection upon this
valuable class of men; but it is a melancholy feature in humanity--of
which sad experience enables me to speak feelingly--that integrity and
horse-flesh are antagonistical, and can never go together. For the
hack-driver personally I have great respect. He is a man of the
world--knows a thing or two about every body and every thing; is
constitutionally addicted to cheating, and elevates that noble
propensity into one of the fine arts; maintains his independent
character, and pockets his extraordinary profits in the face of all
municipal restrictions; scoffs at the reign of the law, and drinks his
regular bitters. I consider him a persecuted and an injured man; but
of such elastic stuff is he made that he rises above all persecutions
and all injuries, and still is, and ever will be, master of that
portion of the human race which travels and abounds in cities. He is
given to humor, too, is the hackman. Nobody better understands how to
give a joke, or to resent one. An adept in ridicule, he always enjoys
it when not applied to himself. If he is deficient in any one quality,
perhaps it is piety. Hack-drivers, as a class, are not pious men; they
may be very good men in their way, but, strictly speaking, they are
not pious. Neither are they much given to mutu