some street where a line of vehicles is crossing the channel of the
torrent. Suddenly all is at a stand-still, and one of those wonderful
English policemen, who look so slight and young after the vast blue
bulks of our Irish force, shows himself in the middle of the channel,
and holds back its rapids with the quiet gesture of extended hands. The
currents and counter-currents gather and press from the rear and
solidify, but in the narrow fissure the policeman stands motionless,
with only some such slight stir of his extended hands as a cat imparts
to her "conscious tail" when she waits to spring upon her prey.

The mute language of his hands, down to the lightest accent of the
fingers, is intelligible to the dullest of those concerned in its
interpretation, and is telepathically despatched from the nearest to the
farthest driver in the block. While the policeman stands there in the
open space, no wheel or hoof stirs, and it does not seem as if the
particles of the mass could detach themselves for such separate movement
as they have at the best. Softly, almost imperceptibly, he drops his
arms, and lets fall the viewless barrier which he had raised with them;
he remains where he was, but the immense bodies he had stayed liquefy
and move in their opposite courses, and for that time the block is over.

If ever London has her epic poet, I think he will sing the omnibus; but
the poet who sings the hansom must be of a lyrical note. I do not see
how he could be too lyrical, for anything more like song does not move
on wheels, and its rapid rhythm suggests the quick play of fancy in that
impetuous form. We have the hansom with us, but it does not perform the
essential part in New York life that it does in London life. In New York
you _may_ take a hansom; in London you _must_. You serve
yourself of it as at home you serve yourself of the electric car; but
not by any means at the same rate. Nothing is more deceitful than the