who is to retire at the summons, "Please pass out forrad." When this is
heard in Bowdoin Square, we rise and push forward, knuckling one another's
backs in our eagerness, and perhaps glancing behind us at the tumult
within. Not only are all our places occupied, but the aisle is left full
of passengers precariously supporting themselves by the straps in the
roof. The rear platform is stormed and carried by a party with bundles;
the driver is instantly surrounded by another detachment; and as the car
moves away from the office, the platform steps are filled.

"Is it possible," I asked myself, when I had written as far as this in the
present noble history, "that I am not exaggerating? It can't be that this
and the other enormities I have been describing are of daily occurrence in
Boston. Let me go verify, at least, my picture of the evening horse-car."
So I take my way to Bowdoin Square, and in the conscientious spirit of
modern inquiry, I get aboard the first car that comes up. Like every other
car, it is meant to seat twenty passengers. It does this, and besides it
carries in the aisle and on the platform forty passengers standing. The
air is what you may imagine, if you know that not only is the place so
indecently crowded, but that in the centre of the car are two adopted
citizens, far gone in drink, who have the aspect and the smell of having
passed the day in an ash-heap. These citizens being quite helpless
themselves, are supported by the public, and repose in singular comfort
upon all the passengers near them; I, myself, contribute an aching back to
the common charity, and a genteelly dressed young lady takes one of them
from time to time on her knee. But they are comparatively an ornament to
society till the conductor objects to the amount they offer him for fare;
for after that they wish to fight him during the journey, and invite him
at short intervals to step out and be shown what manner of men they are.
The conductor passes it off for a joke, and so it is, and a very good one.