helpless creature alive. These are the men who do not act upon the
promptings of human nature like the laborer, and who do not refine upon
their duty like my young gentlemen, and make it their privilege to
befriend the idea of womanhood; they are men who have paid for their seats
and are going to keep them. They have been at work, very probably, all
day, and no doubt they are tired; they look so, and try hard not to look
ashamed of publicly considering themselves before a sex which is born
tired, and from which our climate and customs have drained so much health
that society sometimes seems little better than a hospital for invalid
woman, where every courtesy is likely to be a mercy done to a sufferer.
Yet the two young men of whom I began to speak were not apparently of this
class, and let us hope they were foreigners,--say Englishmen, since we
hate Englishmen the most. They were the only men seated, in a car full of
people; and when four or five ladies came in and occupied the aisle before
them, they might have been puzzled which to offer their places to, if one
of the ladies had not plainly been infirm. They settled the question--if
there was any in their minds--by remaining seated, while the lady in front
of them swung uneasily to and fro with the car, and appeared ready to sink
at their feet. In another moment she had actually done so; and, too weary
to rise, she continued to crouch upon the floor of the car for the course
of a mile, the young men resolutely keeping their places, and not rising
till they were ready to leave the car. It was a horrible scene, and
incredible,--that well-dressed woman sitting on the floor, and those two
well-dressed men keeping their places; it was as much out of keeping with
our smug respectabilities as a hanging, and was a spectacle so paralyzing
that public opinion took no action concerning it. A shabby person,
standing upon the platform outside, swore about it, between
expectorations: even the conductor's heart was touched; and he said he had
seen a good many hard things aboard horse-cars, but that was a little the
hardest; he had never expected to come to that. These were simple people