man, in no distinctive dress, differing in no way
from the passengers generally; quite as well
mannered; and manifesting no servile deference;
never impertinent, and with no mean tricks.
When you have been seated on your red velvet
cushion for perhaps ten minutes, you will see
him walk up and down the centre of the
carriages, collecting his six or ten cent fares. If he
wants to tell the driver to stop, he pulls a leather
strap that runs along the roof of the carriage,
and this strikes an alarum, and warns the driver
to pull in his horses. When the car is stopped,
another pull of this roof-strap tells the driver to
go on. The use of this strap is not confined to
the conductor; any passenger is entitled to pull
it if he wants to stop; or if anything disagreeable
has happened in the carriage, such as a quarrel,
or the admittance of a drunken man.

There is no uneasy stir and anxiety to make
sure of being put down in the right place, as in
England; no necessity to probe and puncture
the conductor, as in London. It is all methodical,
simple, complete. If you are young and alert,
you do not stay to pull the string, but quietly
drop from the back step (which is not a foot
from the ground) without haste and without
fear.

The inside of the carriage holds some forty or
more people without crowding. It is a little
room in width, and there is no fear of your toes
being constantly trodden upon as in English
omnibuses; there is no annoyance from other
people's dirty boots and dripping umbrellas. The
conductor, when he walks down the centre,
brushes nobody's knees. There is, indeed,
no limit to the numbers— seventy or eighty
or one hundred— these cars will hold at the
same time. The extra number are not,
however, jammed and driven into rows of seats
already filled, but they stand comfortably in the
centre of the carriage, holding by leather loops
attached at intervals from the roof for this
purpose. For short distances, many people
prefer standing to sitting.

There are no seats on the roofs of the street
railway cars; it is too hot in summer and too
cold in winter for such an altitude to be enjoyable;
and the risk and trouble of scrambling
about an omnibus roof is never very enviable,
even if the mode of sitting were pleasant. I
should mention, also, that the windows of these
cars have always effective blinds. The fare,
too, is fixed, and very cheap.

These cars have also, like those of the Paris
boulevards, another great advantage. Every
Englishman must remember the unpleasant
moment when he jumps into an omnibus;
before he can get a seat, on goes the vehicle,
sending him tumbling headlong over a suffering
path of toes and corns, and dank dirty straw,
and at last into a seat, between two angry,
hurt, and reluctant people—  perhaps a ruffled
old maid and a gouty millionnaire, fresh from
losses on the Stock Exchange. The French,
mathematical and organising by nature, orderly
Quakers in comparison to us business slovens,
have long since got over this, as all people who
have been to Paris will remember with pleasure
and gratitude. They have a long brass rail
running on either side of the roof, the full length
of the carriage. The Americans have overcome
the same difficulty, equally simply, by means
of the leather loops depending from the roof,
before mentioned. But, indeed, the soft easy
gliding motions of the street railway car, neither
jerking, nor leaping, nor joltingly abrupt, does
not so much need this precaution, though it is
still a comfort.

The American street cars run from well-known
terminal depôts, at certain well-known intervals
of time, and never at any other. They do not
rush off brutally, ten together, like a pack
of hungry curs, to fight and wrangle for the
same twenty passengers, but are orderly as
the planets. They run at gradated hours, and
with proper intervals between each other. Each
horse, each carriage, each driver, each conductor,
performs so many journeys in the day. The horses
are never jaded, and the carriage, full or empty,
never lingers at crossings, side streets, or
public-houses. You never have to wait twenty minutes
for a conveyance. I have already said that these
street railroads require no turn-tables or other
mechanical appliance. The reason of this, is, the
ingenious construction of the carriages, which are
provided on either hand with iron holders for the
traces, and with boxes to receive the pole; thus,
when the driver gets, say to Haarlem, and wants,
after resting his prescribed quarter of an hour,
to return to the city, the grooms of the terminus
stables merely unfasten the horses (Americans,
on account of the heat, use very little harness)
from the front, and attach the animals in two
minutes to what was just now the rear.

There is no bawling of scurrilous conductors
in American streets. Everyone can read the
names of places in large legible letters on
the street cars; if a stranger wants to inquire
his way, it is worth ten cents to leap on the
step, ride for a few minutes, and learn the road
from the conductor: who, if he sees him to be
an Englishman (and they always find an
Englishman out), will be delighted to have a few
minutes' talk with him.

The American omnibuses are not much better
than our own. They are small and the fare is
dear. They are generally, in New York, of a
white colour, which gives them a singular
appearance of cleanliness and brightness. They
rule in Broadway rather insolently, because the
street railroad has not yet reached that Regent-
street of the American commercial capital.
Vested interest has been too strong, but a day
will come, and probably soon (for the
Americans are not slow-handed when they see a
good thing within reach), and the omnibuses
will pass away out of sight like a flight of white
butterflies.

In two respects only, do the American
omnibuses differ from ours. In the first place they
have no roof-bench seats; secondly, you do not
pay the conductor, as with us—  for there is no
conductor—  but you touch a bell to inform the
driver, and then slip your silver cents into a