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Show LIFE -WITH dOIW tHJEiW ' By Geo. V. HobartTl I HENRY ON THE keet CAR Bend, Hep Hardy, pre-Rited pre-Rited me with a neat Kle gold hammer day Mierday. Why, I don't V at I have it I I well use it. ine I hop into one of ,Hyt comfortable street IB city of the second, Ben fourth class, I im-jjKc'ontrast im-jjKc'ontrast it with the K we use in New York Ijttmy self growing red U'. and biting my nails. aBSqueezer cars that Mpitreets of New York aHthe breathless limit, gWgezer car is the best fetation of a rough-wm rough-wm has ever been in- called Squeezers be-gBconductor be-gBconductor has to let EBgers out wh a can Bnd strong men climb IHtet car, and they are HBh and life and vigor, pBlblocks up the road But backward and in-sZy in-sZy for a sanitarium, ijnn a Broadway street JKtance, about 8 o'clock Bhg brings out all that including a lot of cB& he didn't know he H 3census shows us that cars in the city of Miave more ways of lliRnervous prostration ation of the brain to '. 5' inch than the com- ilation of Amsterdam, M 'f, Tinkersdam and kji merung. m ai some of the street 4i 6 o'clock is a prob-$ prob-$ get out again is an ail on. is a rung recently I rode hi y-second street to ii t without once touch-:' touch-:' pr with my feet. ii pie New York street uji v double life, because rn feed all winter to act tyi refrigerator. t It is a cold day when we cannot can-not find it colder in the street lcars. The genus in our street cars are extremely sociable and will follow a stranger all the way home. Often while .riding in the New-York New-York street cars I have felt a germ rubbing against my ankle like a kitten, but, being a gentleman, gen-tleman, at least superficially, I did not reach down and kick it away because the law says we must not be disrespectful to dumb brutes. Many of these street cars are built on the same general plan as a can of condensed milk. When you get out you cannot get in, and when you get in you cannot get out, because you hate to disturb the strange gentleman gen-tleman that is using your knee to lean over. Between the seats there is a space of two feet, but in that space you will always find four feet, and their owners, unless one of them happens to have a wooden leg. Under ordinary circumstances four into two won't go, but the Squeezer cars defy the laws of gravitation. A Squeezer conductor can put twenty-six into nine and still have four to carry. For a man with a small dining din-ing room, the Squeezer car has its advantage, but when a stout man rides in them he finds himself him-self supporting a lot of strangers strang-ers he never met before. One morning I jumped on one of those Squeezers feeling just like a two-year-old, full of health and happiness. During the first seven blocks three men, fresh from a distillery, distil-lery, grew up in front of me and removed the scenery. One of them had to get out in a hurry, so he kicked me on the shins to show how sorry he was to leave me. One of the other two must have been in the distilleiy a long time, "because pretty soon he neglected to use his memory and sat down in my lap. When I remonstrated with him he replied that this is a free country, and if he wished to sit I - P - . I Have the conductor come around every ten minutes for his fare. clown I had no business to stop him. Then his friend pulled us apart, and J resumed the use of my lap. During the next twenty blocks I had one of the worst daylight nightmares I ever rode behind. The party who had been studying the exhibits in the distillery dis-tillery became obsessed with the idea that my foot was the loud pedal on a piano and he started to play the Blue Danube waltzes. That man was such a hard drinker that he gave me the gout just from standing on my feet. Then I jumped off and swore off and swore at and walked home. If the man who invented the idea of standing up between the seats in a Squeezer is alive he should have a monument. My idea would be to catch him alive and place the monu ment on him, and have the conductor con-ductor come around every ten minutes for his fare. I've been up and down and over and across in the surface cars, and my experience is ornamented orna-mented by ripped trousers and discolored shins, but my intellect blows out a fuse every time I try to dope out the real way not to be an end-seat hog. Last Monday I jumped at an early-bird open-face car and it seemed that all the world was filled with joy and good wishes. I was smoking one of those Bad Boy cigars. I call it a Bad Boy cigar because as soon as it goes out it gets awful noisy. The car was empty with the exception of a couple of benches. Two blocks farther on the car stopped and a stout lady looked over the situation. I think she must have been color blind, because she didn't see the empty seats ahead and decided to cast her lot with me. It wras a terrific moment. "John," I said to myself, "don't be a hog move over." And virtue was triumphant. I moved over, and the stout lady settled squashfully into the end seat. Her displacement was about fifteen cents' worth of bench. After we had gone about ten blocks more every seat in the car, in front and behind us, was crowded, but nobody could get in our section because the fat lady held them at bay like Ho-ratius Ho-ratius held the bridge in the brave clays of old. People would rush up to the car when it stopped, glance carelessly care-lessly fore and aft until their eyes rested on the vacant seats in our direction, and then they would see the stout lady sitting there, as graceful as a concrete Sphinx. The people would look at the stout lady with no hope in their eyes, and then, with a sigh they would retire and wait for the next car. No one was brave enough to climb the mountain which grew up between him and the promised prom-ised land. After a while I began to get a toothache in my conscience. "John," I said to myself in a hoarse whisper, "perhaps after all you were the hog because you moved over! After the lady la-dy had climbed over you she would have kept on to the other end of the bench where now there is nothing but a sullen space.". I began to insult myself. "John," I exclaimed inwardly, "what do you know about the etiquette of the street car? According Ac-cording to the newspapers, it is only a man who can be a hog on the street cars, and since you are the original cause of blockading block-ading the port when you moved over, you must be the hog." Then I got so, mad at myself that I refused to talk to myself any further. The next clay I was riding downtown on the end seat with my mind made up to stay there and keep the harbor open for commerce. "Never," I said to myself, "never will anyone become a human Merrimac to bottle up the seating capacity of this particular par-ticular bench while the blood flows through these veins and the flag of freedom waves above me." At the next corner a very thin little gentleman squeezed by me with a look of reproach on his face the like of which I hope never to see again, but I was Charles J. Glue and firm in the end seat.. Then a couple of Italy's sunny sun-ny sons of the names of Micro-beini Micro-beini and Germicide crawled over me and kicked their initials on my kneecap and then sat down to enjoy a smoke of domestic do-mestic rope which fell across my nostrils and remained there in bitterness. After I had been stepped on, sat on, clawed at and scowled at for twenty minutes, I began to discuss myself to myself. "John," I whispered, "do you really think that the general public appreciates your efforts to keep the harbor open?" And then myself replied to myself with a sigh of exhaustion, exhaus-tion, "I don't think." "John," I said to myself, "no matter what your motives may be, the other fellow will always believe you a?e trying to get the best of it. If you move over and give the end seat to another gentleman he will consider it only as his right. If you don't move over he will think you are a hog for keeping that which is as much yours as it is his." I began to grow confidential with myself. "Civilization is a fine idea, but human nature can give it cards and spades and then beat it out," I told myself. "The human hu-man hog was invented long before be-fore the open-face street car began to stop for him, and there isn't anybody living who should stop to throw stones at him, because selfishness is like the measles it breaks out in unexpected places. All of us may not be hogs, but there is a moment in the life of every man when he gets near enough to it to be called a ham sandwich." Just then the Disinfecti brothers, Microbeini and Germi- cide, walked over me and I had a short but exciting visit to the slums. Since that eventful day I have moved over thirty-six times, and out of the thirty-six fl people I gave the end seat to, all fl but three of them belonged to the Mucilage family, and sta3'ed there. Thereafter ! made myself a severe promise not to worry any more about my hog qualifi-cations qualifi-cations when movable or im-movable im-movable on an open-face car. I will do as my conscience die-tates die-tates and walk downtown as iH much as possible. IH And, speaking of street cars, I was in one of those cities re-cently re-cently where some of the cars stop on the near side of some of the streets and some stop on the far side of some of the streets. Honestly, they had me up in the air. I left the hotel to attend to some business downtown and went over on the near side of the street to wait for a car. When the car came along I held my thumb out in the at-mosphere at-mosphere warningly, but the motorman kept on to the far side and stopped. By the time I ran over to the far side he was gone again and another car had stopped at the near side. When I rushed back to the near side the car passed me go-ing go-ing to the far side, and now the near side looked so much like the far side that I went back to the other side, which should have been the near side, but how could it be the near side when the car was on the far side and I could not get near the side in time to catch the car before it was far away on the far side? Just as I rushed back again to the far side the near side be- JM came the nearer side to catch the car, and when I rushed over again from the far side to the near side the nearer I got to the near side the clearer I could see JM that while the far side was far away it was nearer than the near side, which was always on (Continued on Following Paga.) jJ Seeing Life with John Henry. (Continued from Preceding Page.) the far side when I hoped to take a car on the near side. Then I began to grit my teeth and made up my mind to anticipate antici-pate the action of the next car by standing half way between the near side and the far side, so that I could run to either side the emergency called for. I was standing there about a minute, much pleased with the idea, because the near side was now about as far away as the far side, when just then an automobile au-tomobile sneaked up behind me and one of the forward turrets struck me on my own personal far side and hoisted me over to the near side just as a car left for the far side. I reached out my hand to grasp the far side of the step, but I missed it and caught the near side, and by this time the car was on the far side and the motorman grabbed the near side of the electric controller and pushed it over to the far I side, whereupon the car started for El Paso, Texas, at a speed j of about 3000 miles a minute, and there I was with the near side of four fingers holding on to the far side of the step and the rest of my body sticking straight out in space like a pair of trousers on a clothesline in a gale of wind. Then suddenly the near side of my- fingers refused to hold on to the far side of the steR, and with the near side of my face I struck the far side of the tracks, and the near side of my brain saw every individual star on the far side of the universe. Then I went back to the hotel and crawled into the far side of the bed while friend wife sent for a near-side doctor who lived on the far side of the block. u op right, 1 v the MrClurc Newspaper News-paper Syndicate.) |