public so much as the extraordinary way in
which order is kept and fair play observed
when there's a crowd of people—about five
times as many as the 'buss will hold—all
congregated together at the place from which it
starts, and all wanting to get in at once.

"You'd think there'd be no end to the
fighting and scrambling under such circumstances,
the strongest battling their way in and
the weakest going to the wall. Not a bit of
it. There's a little wooden office at the starting
place where they give you a number on a
piece of card—No. 20, 21, 22, or any other
number as the case may be; the earlier you
apply the earlier number you get, and the
sooner consequently you're sent off. Now,
say you get number twenty-one; away you
goes with it and presents yourself among the
crowd about the door of the 'buss. No chance
for you yet. You find that the twentys are
not placed yet, perhaps not the nineteens even,
nor all the eighteens. You must wait till these
are seated. If you were with the strength of a
giant to force your way in you'd just be pulled
out again before you could seat yourself in the
conveyance. You must wait.

"By-and-by the eighteens and the nineteens
are disposed of. 'Any more nineteens?'
shouts the conductor—'any more nineteens?'
There are no more. 'Twentys then,' he sings
out, and immediately all the people with twenty
tickets get in till the vehicle is full. It drives
off, and in due time another takes its place.
The conductor asks at the little office what
number was on when the last 'buss left, and
then takes his place at the door of his own 'buss.
'No. 20' he calls, and in get all the twentys
who remained from the last load, one arter
another. 'Any more twentys?' asks the
conductor, and then at last your chance with your
twenty-one ticket comes, and you get your
place.

"But the systematic ways of the managers,
whoever they were, that had the working of
those Exhibition omnibusses, didn't end with
the starting arrangements. They'd discovered
that by working the 'busses on a tramway,
instead of along the common paved road, a great
saving might be brought about, both in time,
in horses' labour, in wear and tear of rolling
stock, and in a many other ways; so down
went a double set of rails along the whole
line of their journey, from the Exhibition
as far as the most central point in Paris to
which it was possible to bring a tramway
without interfering with the ordinary carriage
traffic. And here, then, springs up a new
difficulty. You require for working any kind
of vehicle on a tramway, a different kind of
wheel to what is required on an ordinary
pavement. You want a wheel with a flange; but
then comes the obstacle that the wheel with
the flange can't be used except on a rail.
This was the fix in which the managers found
themselves when they began to arrange their
plans. What was to be done? Have another
'buss ready with the usual street wheels, and
transfer the passengers into it for the rest of
the journey? That would have been one way
certainly, but an awkward and clumsy way,
and most particularly obnoxious to the passengers
themselves, who hate being turned out of
one vehicle into another, in a batch, to an
extraordinary degree: as any one may observe at a
railway junction when it is necessary for the
travellers to change their carriages. No, that
way wouldn't do, and some other way had to be
hit upon.

"It was in the dusk of the evening when I first
travelled by one of these Leviathan 'busses, and I
couldn't very well see what was agoing on; but
when we come to the beginning of the Paris
streets we come to a stop in a large open space,
where, as far as I could make out from the
window, there was a crowd of workmen with
lanterns, who were rolling wheels about—great
heaps of which were lying here and there by
the way-side—without, as far as I could make
out, any particular object. I'd not been
occupied long in wondering what was going to
happen, when I suddenly felt a great hitch up
of the side of the omnibus on which I was a
sitting. Then there was a kind of a grinding, or a
rewolving sound, if I may so speak, and then we
were hitched down again with a slight bump.
This was followed by a great cracking of
whips and screaming of horses, and we were
off again and rattling through the Paris streets.
Bless you! In that brief space of time they'd
changed the wheels with the flanges on them
for ordinary street wheels fit for ordinary street
traffic.

"You'll understand," the little man added,
"that it was only the wheels on one side as
had to be changed; the flanges on one side
being sufficient to hold the wheels on that side
to the rail, and those on the other side being
ordinary wheels, running along a sunk tramway.

"But there, sir! I might go on for ever
about them French omnibusses, and their
arrangements; their correspondence system for
getting from one line of 'busses to another
line; their plan of putting up a board outside
when the conveyance is full, to tell you so;
their taking your money almost as soon
as you get in, so that there's no temptation
to the passenger to stand on the step while
waiting for change, as so many people—
especially ladies—do with us, forgetting that if
the horses move on so much as a single yard
they're certain to be throwed on their faces in
the road. But what's the use of my going on
about all these things? What I mean to do is
to try and imitate, as far as my humble powers
go, what I've seen, and to try, moreover, to
persuade the governors to go in for some of
those improvements which I've been taking the
liberty of setting before you, and the sight of
which has made me feel so uncommon small
when I've thought of all the scrambling, and
shoving, and the scowling, and the refusing to
close up, and all the rest of the muddle, which
I've witnessed, first and last, in the course of all