Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-03-17
THE WOMAN IN
THE STREET CAR

| FROM the New YORK SUR
| Here is man a woman sitting in n
| car with a narrow vacant space one side
of him or her and a wider space on the
| other, but neither of these spaces wide
| enough to accommodate another person
| in comfort: and what l want to know is, -
! said Mr.. Grumperly. why doesn't the per-
| son so sitting move along, to one side or
| the other, when another passenger looking
| for a seat comes in and so make room for
| the newcomer?
| But often they don't move. They just sit
| anchored where they are and let the new
conner sit in discomfort on the edge of the
seat, when by moving a little in either d.
Erection they might have made fof~he new
| conner ample room.
| Sometimes you see the newcomer, thus
| actually deprived of his due, just sit there
on the edge Of the seat too timid to assert
| his rights, or not crowding back because
| he doesn't want to be rude himself. And
sometimes you see newcomer push him
self back after moment impatiently and
vigorously. crowdng the man who has
failed to move good and hard.
so. by the lack OF ordinary politeness
on the part of the man who should
have moved up originally. have fine
mess: this man himself is now uncomfort-
| able, the newcomer who has crowded him
self in is uncomfortable and his crowding
makes the entirely innocent man the
other side of him uncomfortable. Here
now are three men made uncomfortable
just by little lack OF polteness on the
part of one.
Commonly the persons who thus fail to
shift along do shift for persons Of the OPP
posite sex; a man will move for a woman
and a woman for man: 1t Is to persons OF
their own sex that, most commonly. this
lack Of politeness is shown. l have ehdeav-
ored to show you how a man takes 1t. Let
me to try tell you what the incoming woman
compelled to sit on the edge of the seat
does in like circumstances:
1.-The man so crcumstanced is likely to
betray more or less peevishness. the wom-
an never does. When she comes into a car
and finds another woman sitting there so
disposed that there is one-third of vacant
seat on one side of her and two-thirds of a
vacant seat on the other, and this woman
sitting shows no inclination whatever to
move, in fact betrays by not SO much as
the flicker of an eyelash any knowledge
of even the other woman's presence in
the car, what, then, does this incoming
woman do?
why, when she comes in she sits down
on the edge of the seat in that widest space
cooly and calmly, and as If that were the
sort of seat she would have selected If she
could have chosen. She is perfectly com
Portable and at ease there, and she wouldn't
move back If she could for fear of missing
her gown.
so she sits there not only comfort
able and at ease. but in a repressed sort
of way, buoyant, pleased with herself
seat sister who had failed to make room
for her as completely and absolutely as
her next seat sister had Ignored her, and
accomplishing this absolutely without os-
tentation
"She doesn't look at the other woman.
nor over her head. nor stare straight across
at the other side of the nor hxedly
down toward the other end, and so she
sits there careful only--but in this showing
no sign of carefulness-not to disturb her
gown. pleased with herself and intent only
on her own thoughts, apparently without so
much as a glimmef of consciousness of the
presence of the other woman, and all this
she carries out with beautiful and uncon-
scious perfection of detail to the final fin
iSh.
IF the woman who had failed to make
room for her as she might have done gets
I'D and leaves the car before she does the
newcomer does not then settle back into
the then free space Never. She con-
tinues to sit there on the edge OF the seat
as she did when she first sat down, as
though that were her choice. and so she
sits. calm unruffied, pleased, bound on
pleasant errand. and when she gets UP to
20 1t Is as though her direction lay that
way and as though that were all she had
in mind, by the other door.
$50 with a woman when she encounters
another woman who declines to move
little and give up to her the space that
rightfully belongs to her. In sheer nerve
and absoluteness of self-contrOl, as in so
many other things. woman has man beaten
by about 1000 kilometers.