I am in Broadway near the Battery, and
I want to go up, miles off, into Bowery, and
to slant off thence to some side avenue. The
cars of the street railroad are what I wait for.
I am near the dull red pile of Trinity Church,
and desire to overleap space and to be in time
for dinner with my friend Judge Stuyvesant, at
Henderson-street, by five. I know that to take
a cab or hackney-carriage in New York would
evince a folly almost criminal. In the first
place, Americans never use these costly
conveyances, which are so expensive, partly
because they are drawn by two horses, and partly
because the drivers are bullies and scoundrels.
Their costliness I know, because I once paid
four shillings to go less than a mile— from the
Astor House Hotel to the New York Hotel
at the upper end of Broadway—  and when
I paid it, the American friend whom I was with,
congratulated me on having escaped so cheaply.
In fact, it is not the custom in New York to
hire a hackney-coach, and only foreigners and
greenhorns ever do so, and they learn to rue it.

The ordinary frequenter of the streets uses
the ordinary omnibus or the street railway car.
Nor has he any cause to complain of either,
for the Americans are a hundred years beyond
us in both sorts of conveyance—  in simplicity,
in accommodation, and in organisation of times
of transit.

As the system of laying the rails seems not
understood in England, and its difficulty is a
special stumbling-block of its opponents (chiefly
persons interested in the existing public
conveyances) let me briefly describe the street
railroad.

The rails are sunk a little below the surface
of the street, so that the carriage-wheel
sinks down upon them, its hollow surface fitting
into the sunken rail, as in the ordinary tramroad
way. As the carriages go at a sure steady
safe pace, the rail is little worn, and does not
often require renewal. When it does, the
discomposure of the road is less than the fuss
produced in our London streets by laying down a
single gas-pipe. These slightly sunk rails, which
require no bristling array of dangerous points or
switches, no complicated and expensive
machinery of dial-plates and turn-tables, are hardly
visible till you are close upon them. They rut
the road, less than a gutter does, or a
rain-gully. So far from being an impediment to
general traffic, they aid it; and it is a common
thing in New York to see a heavily laden cart,
full of iron, or hogsheads, following the street
railway car: the carter using the rails to ease
his steaming horses. But of course only those
carts which are of the right gauge, and whose
wheels are not too broad for the rails, can obtain
this privilege. Really to hear the Chinese of
Europe talk about this excellent modern invention,
you would think that at the sight of a street
railway car, all the horses within view became
unmanageable, and all the riders were at once thrown
off. In reality, a street railway car is far less
dangerous to face than a Hansom cab, or a racing
omnibus; it comes on at a quiet, even, sliding
pace, and is so easy to avoid, that I never heard
of even a child or an old woman who was
injured by one.

But here comes a car— to return to my
personality—  gliding on at some nine miles an hour,
slackening as I approach, to let out a batch of
passengers. It moves on again before I can
well reach it; but a moment's trot  " at the
double," and I overtake it, and while it moves, I
leap on to the broad steps, catch hold of the
balcony rail, and pass into the interior.

It resembles a huge omnibus, it is loftier
than ours and full twice as long, and is
corporeally of a cheery vermilion or glowing
sun-flower colour— hues not mitigated by the
ardent sun and bright sea air of New York city.
Outside it will generally bear, as badges of
some company I suppose, varnishy portraits of
Moorish beauties, or grotesque heads in cocked
hats, representing the Knickerbocker whom
Washington Irving made immortal in America,
or the great general who was George the Third's
special bugbear, with his grand calm face, his
thin cold lips, and his grave massy face.

The carriage has two doors about the size of
ordinary summer-house doors, both of which
either shut or slide close. The rows of windows,
always open in summer—  for American heat
would roast ice itself—  pull up and down much
as ours do at home. The driver, wearing no
uniform or livery, but in plain paletot and
wide-awake, stands (never sits) on the low small
platform in front of his door, driving his two
horses quietly, but with perfect ease. In
summer he generally pushes back the door
behind him, and chats with the nearest
passengers; with that quiet, frank, manly ease,
peculiar to Americans in such ranks of life.
More generally, if the passengers are inclined
to be silent or want the door shut, he slides
the door, and talks to somebody who stands
beside him, or to the conductor, who having
collected his cents, has saved time for
conversation. Talk to the driver. He will stand no
nonsense of English pride, but you will find him
sensible and well informed, full of quiet self-
respect and the confidence that arises from it.

The conductor has his own coteries, his
gossips and familiars, on the platform at the
other end of the car. It is guarded by a low
partition four feet high, against which passengers
preferring the open air can lean, or on which
they can sit: though sitting is rather unsafe,
unless you hold tight, as a sudden jolt or a sudden
increase of speed might make you fall backward.
The platform is wide enough to hold another
passenger beside yourself, if he choose to keep
himself together, and lean against the opposite
side of the carriage on either side of the door.
Without crowding, there might, with the
conductor, be room (on the two steps and all) for
about six persons on the outside car and
platforms; but in the evening, when merchants are
coming home to dinner on the river-side railways,
I have seen a dozen or more clinging on to
different parts of the small enclosure; but this is
exceptional. The conductor is a neatly-dressed