oman is a widow. She has
told me a number of times of the last days of her husband. It is a
touching story. She realised that the end was near, and humoured him in
his idea of returning before it was too late to "the old country." One
day when he had asked her again if she had got the tickets, and then
turned his face to the wall to cough, she said to herself,
"_Good_-night--shirt."

But most of the discourse of my scrubwoman is cheerful. She is a valiant
figure, a brave being very fond of the society of her friends (of whom I
hold myself to be one), who works late at night, and talks continually.
I know that if you would contrive to find favour with your scrubwoman you
would often be like that person told of by mine who "laughed until she
thought his heart would break."

The most brotherly car-conductors, naturally, are those with not over
much business, those on lines in remote places. I remember the loss I
suffered not long ago on a suburban car, which results, I am sorry to
say, in your loss also.

The bell signalling to stop rang, and a vivaciously got-up woman with an
extremely broad-at-the-base, pear-shaped torse, arose and got herself
carefully off the car. The conductor went forward to assist her. When
he returned aft he came inside the car and sat on the last seat with two
of us who were his passengers. The restlessness was in him which betrays
that a man will presently unbosom himself of something. This finally
culminated in his remarking, as if simply for something to say to be
friendly, "You noticed that lady that just got off back there? Well," he
continued, leaning forward, having received a look intended to be not
discouraging, "that's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little
actress;--that lady's the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress."

"Is that so!" exclaimed one who was his passenger, not wishing to deny
him the pleasure he expected of having excited astonishment. A car
conductor leads a hard life, poor fellow, and one should not begrudge him
a little pleasure like that.

The conductor twisted away his face for an instant while he spat
tobacco-juice. Thus cleared for action, he returned to the subject of
his thoughts. "That's the mother of Cora Splitts," he repeated again.
"She's at White Plains tonight, Cora is. Cora and me," he said, as one
that says, "ah, me, what a world it is!"--"Cora and me was chums once.
Yes, sir; we was chums and went to school together." Some valu