Year: 1874

HE LVNDUN CAbMANs

 Viewed from the Danbury Ian's stand- point.

 The first Englishman the traveller meets is burly and red faced gentle man, with big metal plate on his coat (front) containing a number, mounted on the back of cab or the front of Q hackney carriage.

 He will grow familiar with this chap by the time he has been twenty -four hours in London.

 He will find the race patrolling every back street, or standing on every impor- tant theroughfare, and he will come to look upon them pretty much as man looks upon dog who has suddenly and most unexpectedly snapped at his leg. The reader will infer from these few remarks that there is something obiec- tionable in the London cabmen, and he is right; but while am free to con- demn the class am equally free to credit them with one cardinal virtue. They are not extensively familiar.

 They are to be found at the depots, but they do not block the way, and scream atyou until you are deafened and crazy. They do not mix onions with rum and tobacco, and scorch you with the dreadful simeon. They do not step on you, and jerk you off your feet, and jam your hat over your eyes, They do not pull off your coat and limbs, and distribute your baggage into five differ ent hacks,

 They are in front of you but not in under you. They are to the right and to the left, but they open not their mouths.

 They are the dumb walters you have heard so much of.

 The moment you step out of the cars into any one of the capacious depots in the city, railroad porter asks you if you will have hack, and if you have luggage, he calls the hack, and with the assistance of the driver loads your luggage, loads yourself, closes the door, and touches his hat to you and you are off in 8 jiffy, feeling grateful for the relief and attention, while the porter stands on the platform, and curses you ill the bottomest recesses of his heart for not giving him sixpence.

 Such is man when in health.

 When you reach the hotel tue "cab- by," as hackman is here called, jumps down with alacrity, and with the assist ance of the hotel porter disembarks your luggage and yourself, charges you three shillings and sixpence, and is off again with an expression of purity on his countenance that is irresistible. You have vague impression of reading on a card inside of the hackney that any distance of two miles or less is to be charged one shilling, and you go into the hotel regretting that you have not time to stand on the curbstone and give full play to your feelings.

 It may be said that this system of extortion is common to all hackmen. Granted. But there are features of the London system which aggravate it far beyond the American process, and make it almost unbearable.

 In the first place this, until you be- come acquainted with the omnibus routes, is your only means of transfer about the city. And your helplessness is taken advantage of. Secondly, you are an American, with the impress of your nativity so indelibly set upon you, that no hackman fails to take advantage of your ignorance of the ways and cus- toms of the country. And thus the American citizenship upon which you have constantly, loudly, and almost offenslvely prided yourself, becomes 8 hated object to you.

 After you have got into the hotel and cooled down, you find some consolation in the reflection that you were so help less that no hackman could be blamed for taking advantage of you.

 After this, however, you'd like to see 'em, accompanying the deduction with a movement of the fist, impressive of the belief that you never will see them do it again.

 There are hackneys and cabs the former are four-wheelers, and the latter are two-wheelers. The latter are de- signed for two occupants. They open in front, giving the rider full view of the street ahead, while the driver sits on perch at the back. They are much the pleasanter of the two to ride in, but the pleasure is in measure modified by the discussion, recrimination and per- spiration which invariably follow the settling of the fare.

 With the four-wheelers one plucking appears to be enough, and once away from the depots you are confident to be carried two miles in any direction for a shilling.

 You take hanson (two-wheeler) for half mile drive and throw the dr1ver shilling. He looks at it in perplexed and commiserative manner that is be- yond all imitation and asks

 "What's this for ?"

 You patiently explain to him. He says eighteen pence is the fare. You protest that the distance does not war rant that charge. He is stubborn. You can force him, so the card says, to drive to the nearest police station for adjudication. But you are stranger. He may drive you to the first police station and he may drive you over the nearest embankment.

 You pay him sixpence more, and scold the government under which he thrives. ...

 As long thereafter as you bear the mark of an American so long will you be subject to the peculative tendencies i of the hanson cab driver. The shilling