st night, and I gave up my seat to
sixteen ladies, two of whom, by-the-way, thanked me."

"I don't see why more than one of them should thank you," sniffed the
landlady. "If a man gives up a trolley-car seat to sixteen ladies, only
one of them can occupy it."

"I stand corrected," said the Idiot. "I gave up a seat to ladies sixteen
times between City Hall and Twenty-third Street. I can't bring myself to
sit down while a woman stands, and every time I'd get a seat some woman
would get on the car. Hence it was that I gave up my seat to sixteen
ladies. Why two of them should thank me, considering the rules, I do not
know. It certainly is not the custom. At any rate, if I had walked
up-town, I should not have had more exercise than I got on that car,
bobbing up and down so many times, and lurching here and lurching there
every time the car stopped, started, or turned a corner. Whether it was
the thanks or the lurching I got, I don't know, but the incidents of
the ride were so strongly impressed upon me that I dreamed all night,
only in my dreams I was not giving up car seats. The first seat I gave
up to a woman in the dream was an eighty-thousand-dollar seat in the
Stock Exchange. It was expensive courtesy, but I did it, and mourned so
over the result that I waked up and discovered that it was but a dream.
Then I went to sleep again. This time I was at the opera. I had the best
seat in the house, when in came a woman who hadn't a chair. Same result.
I got up. She sat down, and I had to stand behind a pillar where I could
neither see nor hear. More grief; waked up again, more tired than when I
went to bed. In ten minutes I dozed off. Found myself an ambitious
statesman running for the Presidency. Was elected and inaugurated. Up
comes a Woman's Rights candidate. More courtesy. Gave up the
Presidential chair to her and went home to obscurity, when again I
awoke tireder than ever. Clock struck four. Fell asleep again. This time
I was prepared for anything that might happen. I found myself in a
trolley-car, but with me I had a perforated chair-bottom, such as the
street peddlers sell. Lady got aboard. I put the perforated chair-bottom
on my lap and invited her to sit down. She thanked me and did so. Then
another lady got on. The lady on my lap moved up and made room for the
second lady. She sat down. Between them they must have weighed three
hundred pounds. I could have stood that, but as time went on more ladies
got aboard, an