e box or sound asleep inside their
cabs, harmonize with their rigs.

These are the Nighthawkers of the Tenderloin. The name is not an
assuring one, but it is suspected that it has been aptly given.

One bleak midnight in late November a cab of this description waited in
the lee of the elevated stairs. The cab itself was weather-beaten,
scratched, and battered. The driver, who sat half inside and half
outside the vehicle, with his feet on the sidewalk and his back propped
against the seat-cushion, puffed a short pipe and watched with indolent
but discriminating eye those who passed. He wore a coachman's coat of
faded green which seemed to have acquired a stain for every button it
had lost. On his head sat jauntily a rusty beaver and his face,
especially the nose, was of a rich crimson hue.

The horse, that seemed to lean on rather than stand in the patched
shafts, showed many well-defined points and but few curves. His thin
neck was ewed, there were deep hollows over the eyes, the number of his
ribs was revealed with startling frankness and the sagging of one
hind-quarter betrayed a bad leg. His head he held in spiritless fashion
on a level with his knees. As if to add a note of irony, his tail had
been docked to the regulation of absurd brevity and served only to tag
him as one fallen from a more reputable state.

Suddenly, up and across the intersecting thoroughfares, with a sharp
clatter of hoofs, rolled a smart closed brougham. The dispirited bobtail
looked up as a well-mated pair pranced past. Perhaps he noted their
sleek quarters, the glittering trappings on their backs and their
gingery action. As he dropped his head again something very like a sigh
escaped him. It might have been regret, perhaps it was only a touch of
influenza.

The driver, too, saw the turnout and gazed after it. But he did not
sigh. He puffed away at his pipe as if entirely satisfied with his lot.
He was still watching the brougham when a surface-car came gliding
swiftly around a curve. There was a smash of splintering wood and
breaking glass. The car had struck the brougham a battering-ram blow,
crushing a rear wheel and snapping the steel axle at the hub.

From somewhere or other a crowd of curious persons appeared and circled
about to watch while the driver held the plunging horses and the footman
hauled from the overturned carriage a man and a woman in evening dress.
The couple seemed unhurt and, although somewhat rumpled as to attir