scorn by one taciturn wink of the conductor's eye.

Among horse-car types, I am almost ashamed to note one so common and
observable as that middle-aged lady who gets aboard and will not see the
one vacant seat left, but stands tottering at the door, blind and deaf to
all the modest beckonings and benevolent gasps of her fellow-passengers.
An air as of better days clings about her; she seems a person who has
known sickness and sorrow; but so far from pitying her, you view her with
inexpressible rancor, for it is plain that she ought to sit down, and that
she will not. But for a point of honor the conductor would show her the
vacant place; this forbidding, however, how can he? There she stands and
sniffs drearily when you glance at her, as you must from time to time, and
no wild turkey caught in a trap was ever more incapable of looking down
than this middle-aged (shall I say also unmarried?) lady.

Of course every one knows the ladies and gentlemen who sit cater-
cornered, and who will not move up; and equally familiar is that large and
ponderous person, who, feigning to sit down beside you, practically sits
down upon you, and is not incommoded by having your knee under him. He
implies by this brutal conduct that you are taking up more space than
belongs to you, and that you are justly made an example of.

I had the pleasure one day to meet on the horse-car an advocate of one of
the great reforms of the day. He held a green bag upon his knees, and
without any notice passed from a question of crops to a discussion of
suffrage for the negro, and so to womanhood suffrage. "Let the women
vote," said he,--"let 'em vote if they want to. _I_ don't care. Fact
is, I should like to see 'em do it the first time. They're excitable, you
know; they're excitable;" and he enforced his analysis of female character
by thrusting his elbow sharply into my side. "Now, there's my wife; I'd