omnibus was hailed by a hand under an umbrella on the side walk, and the
dignified horses bidden to halt from their trot did not waste time in
wild and unseemly spasms. They, too, braced their legs and slid gravely
to the end of their momentum.

It was not the feat, but it was the word which had at this time the
power to conjure memories of skating parties on moonlit lakes, with
laughter ringing over the ice, and a great red bonfire on the shore
among the hemlocks.

CHAPTER IV.

A terrible thing in nature is the fall of a horse in his harness. It is
a tragedy. Despite their skill in skating there was that about the
pavement on the rainy evening which filled me with expectations of
horses going headlong. Finally it happened just in front. There was a
shout and a tangle in the darkness, and presently a prostrate cab horse
came within my cylinder. The accident having been a complete success and
altogether concluded, a voice from the side walk said, "_Look_ out, now!
_Be_ more careful, can't you?"

I remember a constituent of a Congressman at Washington who had tried in
vain to bore this Congressman with a wild project of some kind. The
Congressman eluded him with skill, and his rage and despair ultimately
culminated in the supreme grievance that he could not even get near
enough to the Congressman to tell him to go to Hades.

This cabman should have felt the same desire to strangle this man who
spoke from the side walk. He was plainly impotent; he was deprived of
the power of looking out. There was nothing now for which to look out.
The man on the side walk had dragged a corpse from a pond and said to
it, "_Be_ more careful, can't you, or you'll drown?" My cabman pulled up
and addressed a few words of reproach to the other. Three or four
figures loomed into my cylinder, and as they appeared spoke to the
author or the victim of the calamity in varied terms of displeasure.
Each of these reproaches was couched in terms that defined the situation
as impending. No blind man could have conceived that the precipitate
phrase of the incident was absolutely closed. "_Look_ out now, cawnt
you?" And there was nothing in his mind which approached these
sentiments near enough to tell them to go to Hades.

However, it needed only an ear to know presently that these expressions
were formulae. It was merely the obligatory dance which the Indians had
to perform before they went to war. These men had come to help, but as a
re