In that unhappy mass it would be an audacious spirit who should say of any
particular arm or leg, "It is mine," and all the breath is in common.
Nothing, it would seem, could add to our misery; but we discover our error
when the conductor squeezes a tortuous path through us, and collects the
money for our transportation. I never can tell, during the performance of
this feat, whether he or the passengers are more to be pitied.

The people who are thus indecorously huddled and jammed together, without
regard to age or sex, otherwise lead lives of at least comfort, and a good
half of them cherish themselves in every physical way with unparalleled
zeal. They are handsomely clothed; they are delicately neat in linen; they
eat well, or, if not well, as well as their cooks will let them, and at
all events expensively; they house in dwellings appointed in a manner
undreamt of elsewhere in the world,--dwellings wherein furnaces make a
summer-heat, where fountains of hot and cold water flow at a touch, where
light is created or quenched by the turning of a key, where all is
luxurious upholstery, and magical ministry to real or fancied needs. They
carry the same tastes with them to their places of business; and when they
"attend divine service," it is with the understanding that God is to
receive them in a richly carpeted house, deliciously warmed and perfectly
ventilated, where they may adore Him at their ease upon cushioned seats,--
secured seats. Yet these spoiled children of comfort, when they ride to or
from business or church, fail to assert rights that the benighted Cockney,
who never heard of our plumbing and registers, or even the oppressed
Parisian, who is believed not to change his linen from one revolution to
another, having paid for, enjoys. When they enter the "full" horse-car,
they find themselves in a place inexorable as the grave to their
greenbacks, where not only is their adventitious consequence stripped from
them, but the courtesies of life are impossible, the inherent dignity of
the person is denied, and they are reduced below the level of the most