that one really noble modern thing which our age, when it is judged,
will gravely put beside the Parthenon. It is really modern in that
it is both secret and swift. My particular hansom cab was modern in
these two respects; it was also very modern in the fact that it came
to grief. But it is also English; it is not to be found abroad; it
belongs to a beautiful, romantic country where nearly everybody is
pretending to be richer than they are, and acting as if they were.
It is comfortable, and yet it is reckless; and that combination
is the very soul of England. But although I had always
realised all these good qualities in a hansom cab, I had not
experienced all the possibilities, or, as the moderns put it,
all the aspects of that vehicle. My enunciation of the merits
of a hansom cab had been always made when it was the right way up.
Let me, therefore, explain how I felt when I fell out of a hansom
cab for the first and, I am happy to believe, the last time.
Polycrates threw one ring into the sea to propitiate the Fates.
I have thrown one hansom cab into the sea (if you will excuse a rather
violent metaphor) and the Fates are, I am quite sure, propitiated.
Though I am told they do not like to be told so.

I was driving yesterday afternoon in a hansom cab down one
of the sloping streets into the Strand, reading one of my own
admirable articles with continual pleasure, and still more
continual surprise, when the horse fell forward, scrambled a moment
on the scraping stones, staggered to his feet again, and went forward.
The horses in my cabs often do this, and I have learnt to enjoy
my own articles at any angle of the vehicle. So I did not see
anything at all odd about the way the horse went on again.
But I saw it suddenly in the faces of all the people on the pavement.
They were all turned towards me, and they were all struck