patient New York public.

Suppose you are in a cable car, clutching for life and family a creaking
strap from overhead. At your shoulder is a little dude in a very
wide-brimmed straw hat with a red band. If you were in your senses you
would recognise this flaming band as an omen of blood. But you are not
in your senses; you are in a Broadway cable car. You are not supposed to
have any senses. From the forward end you hear the gripman uttering
shrill whoops and running over citizens. Suddenly the car comes to a
curve. Making a swift running start, it turns three hand-springs, throws
a cart wheel for luck, bounds into the air, hurls six passengers over
the nearest building, and comes down a-straddle of the track. That is
the way in which we turn curves in New York.

Meanwhile, during the car's gamboling, the corrugated rim of the dude's
hat has swept naturally across your neck, and has left nothing for your
head to do but to quit your shoulders. As the car roars your head falls
into the waiting arms of the proper authorities. The dude is dead;
everything is dead. The interior of the car resembles the scene of the
battle of Wounded Knee, but this gives you small satisfaction.

There was once a person possessing a fund of uncanny humour who greatly
desired to import from past ages a corps of knights in full armour. He
then purposed to pack the warriors into a cable car and send them around
a curve. He thought that he could gain much pleasure by standing near
and listening to the wild clash of steel upon steel--the tumult of
mailed heads striking together, the bitter grind of armoured legs
bending the wrong way. He thought that this would teach them that war is
grim.

Towards evening, when the tides of travel set northward, it is curious
to see how the gripman and conductor reverse their tempers. Their
dispositions flop over like patent signals. During the down-trip they
had in mind always the advantages of being at Battery Park. A perpetual
picture of the blessings of Battery Park was before them, and every
delay made them fume--made this picture all the more alluring. Now the
delights of up-town appear to them. They have reversed the signs on the
cars; they have reversed their aspirations. Battery Park has been gained
and forgotten. There is a new goal. Here is a perpetual illustration
which the philosophers of New York may use.

In the Tenderloin, the place of theatres, and of the restaurant where
gayer New York does