likenesses, or swept away, like the woodsheds where were kept the
stove-wood and kindling that the "girl" and the "hired-man" always
quarrelled over: who should fetch it. Horse and stable and woodshed,
and the whole tribe of the "hired-man," all are gone. They went
quickly, yet so silently that we whom they served have not yet really
noticed that they are vanished.

So with other vanishings. There were the little bunty street-cars on
the long, single track that went its troubled way among the
cobblestones. At the rear door of the car there was no platform, but
a step where passengers clung in wet clumps when the weather was bad
and the car crowded. The patrons--if not too absent-minded--put their
fares into a slot; and no conductor paced the heaving floor, but the
driver would rap remindingly with his elbow upon the glass of the door
to his little open platform if the nickels and the passengers did not
appear to coincide in number. A lone mule drew the car, and sometimes
drew it off the track, when the passengers would get out and push it
on again. They really owed it courtesies like this, for the car was
genially accommodating: a lady could whistle to it from an upstairs
window, and the car would halt at once and wait for her while she shut
the window, put on her hat and cloak, went downstairs, found an
umbrella, told the "girl" what to have for dinner, and came forth from
the house.

The previous passengers made little objection to such gallantry on the
part of the car: they were wont to expect as much for themselves on
like occasion. In good weather the mule pulled the car a mile in a
little less than twenty minutes, unless the stops were too long; but
when the trolley-car came, doing its mile in five minutes and better,
it would wait for nobody. Nor could its passengers have endured such