The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-07-08
HORSE CARS IN GOTHAM.
ANTIOUATED VEHICLES ON MANY
 CITY STREETS.
snatI-LtNe Progress Some Lines It Would Not Pay to Have undei- ground oIley-Impracticnblo on


 the White Star line to see a friend who
 was about to. sail for Europe. l knew
 he was at the steamer, and it was nec-
 essary to see him at once. l happened
 to be on lower Broadway at the time
 and I saved myself the cost of a can
 by taking the belt line car at the foot
 of Broadway. As I climbed into the
 ramshackle old car, with it's yards O.
 threadbare carpeting on the seats, ana
 seated myself at the front end, where l
 could look at the team of old white horses, the reproach that l had beard
 against New York by a friend from
 Minneapolis recurred to me.
 New York is a regular jay town"
 he had said to me: why. look at the
 old horse cars running across the town
 all the time! We were through with
 horse cars in the west ten or fifteen
 years ago."
 It didn't occur to me when he said 1 this that an occasional horse car on a
 subsidiary line was necessarily jay
 institution, but I realized that cer-
 tainly there was something extremely
 antiquated and rustic about this con
 veyance that l was in.
 The driver was an old man, evidently
 a German, and he carried whip with
 a wooden handle and a ragged lash,
 with which from time to time he gently | thrashed the old white horse, not as a 1 punishment, but as sort of friendly.
 admontion. The conductor was an
 old man, too, with white hair and
 stoop in his shoulders. The car lurch- l ed reeled and creaked and rattled over | the rough stone pavement. The small, loose windows made jarring tumult that set my teeth on edge. It seemed
 as if the car was actually being drawn over the paving stones, without any
 rails. The driver constantly blew shrill whistle which he held between his teeth, to warn the trucks out ot the way, but the trucks paid no attention. Every other minute the shreWd old horses swung clear around, at right an- gles with the car, to avoid coming into collision with some wagon that sudden ly got across the track, and sldled along that way till the wagon was out of the way or the old driver had brought the car to a stop with the brake Then when the track happened to pc CltdT lOI d illIlc way, Itis- Ni it'Nh swung his whip and forced the team into an amble to make up for lost time and the window of the car rattled and rared as if an earthquake were shak- ing them.
 All sorts of people were on the car. Three Italians in working clothes shout ed to make one another hear mingling with the rattle of the windows the chatter of their staccato tongue A fashionably dressed lady and gentle man had entered the car at Broadway and left it. as I did at the White Star line. An old Irishwoman was there with a basket. and several corpulent marketmen looked grand, gloomy and peculiar Presently little old Ameri- can woman moved up to me and asked if I could tell her where she should get off to take the ferry to go to Bergen Point. I was ashamed to say that I could not.
 T can't find out from the conductor" said the old lady, "because he's intoxi- cated."
 I had noticed that something was the matter with the conductor. but l told her that did not believe it was intoxi- cation-that I thought it was merely extreme old age. But the old lady was suspicious. She should have borne in mind that any man would have been unsteady in his movements on such car and the conductors back was bent and his eyes were dim with years He was really fit guide and custodian of so anticipated a vehicle The old lady alighted from the car I guess, in what | was quite evidently an unpleasant frame of mind.
 Somewhere on West street we got in 1 to a jam of teams, which delayed us for several minutes. Then, when the l driver put the horses into a gallop to gain time, one of them stepped on the ! side of a particularly high paving stone, slipped, stumbled, crossed his | legs, recovered himself and after that went lame for d considerable distance. | At just about this time a curious presented itself. Three or | four freight cars, drawn by dummy 1 engine, appeared in front of us on West i street. Their pace was not so rapid | as ours had been when the horses were able to gallop but it was more rapid | than our slower gait so that the train | did not really obstruct us. As we rat tied along in the wake of the freight cars, l noticed men and boys running to climb up the ladders of the box cars to sit and ride nthem till at last the tops of the cars were pretty thickly covered. Evidently they were stealing a ride. This system of intramural rap i'd transit on freight cars was new thing to me
 Intending to cross the town from the White Star line, after I had finished there, to see friend who lives at Stuy- vesant park, I asked the aged conduc- tor for transfer, but he said that none was issued. I reached the White Star dock at Eleventh street just thir- ty-five minutes after I left Broadway, and felt that I had done we'll l also experienced a sensation when I disem- parked that I had been back somewhere n remote antiquity.
 After I had seen my friend at the steamer, I looked for Christopher street ferry and Twenty third street horse car to take me over to Stuy- 5esant park. It is the peculiarty of ,ne way 1t does not go near Twenty .hird street. but crosses the town and 'uns down Seventeenth street. I did lot find this car in charge of an old nan, but of a rather smart-looking youth. It was an open car, and the east wind blew the fog into our faces. t went along at a good pace, and did lot get blocked There was a great