CHAPTER III.

There was.—­Here’s explicitness!  Here’s directness!  Here’s explanatoryness!  In my pap days I learned that without a verb there could not be a sentence, not even a judge’s sentence.  I know “was” ain’t much of a word all alone by itself, but then chuck it in among a lot of other fellows, and how it does make them stand around.  And then it’s so deliciously incomprehensible—­there was.  Mind you, it don’t say that the same thing isn’t now.  And, mind you, it don’t say whether it refers to the day before yesterday, or the commencement of the Franco-Prussian opera bouffe, or our late unpleasantness, or the beginning of the world, or before that.  No, it can’t go back of the beginning, for before that there wasn’t.  Anyhow, it leaves you in such a pleasant state of uncertainty that you very willingly pass on to.

CHAPTER IV.

A man.—­Here we arrive at something specific.  “A two-legged animal, who laughs.”  That definition excludes women, because they giggle, or chuckle, or cachinnate.  This expression is a very general one; it includes a vast number of individuals.  It even takes in tailors, for, by a wise provision of Providence, the number of tailors in this world at any one time is always a multiple of nine; so that you can point to any nine of them and boldly say, a man.  I am not sure that this term does not include gorillas, for, by a wise provision of Congress, they can at any time be made men and brethren.  One advantage about the subject of this chapter is this:  it is never necessary to put a head on it, as it is generally furnished with that appendage by nature.

So endeth this thrilling tale.  A sequel to it will be published in the early part of the next century, entitled,

“THERE WAS ONCE A TIME UPON A MAN.”

* * * * *

HORSE-CAR HUMBUGS.

The Horse-Car is an omnivorous animal, though its chief diet is garbage, as our sense of smell has often proved to us.

The “people’s coach” it has been called, but in misery’s name, I ask, must the whole public crowd into one coach?  Yesterday, after I had waited for a car the best part of the forenoon, it came crawling along at snail-like pace, the horses fast asleep, and the driver gazing vacantly into space, thoroughly exhausted in endeavors to wake them up.

I entered, and was thrust into one of two congealed rows of mortality, which faced each other from opposite benches.

Then the people filled the passage; they crowded it to suffocation; they piled on to the platforms in battalions; six wretches depended from the hind brake; others were suspended from the top of the car, with hands and feet thrust through the leathers, and two actually balanced themselves around the driver’s neck.

Fearful moans arose from the enormous mass of condensed humanity; people panted for breath; they gasped, and rolled their eyes in horrible frenzy, and still the conductor yelled fiercely, and with demoniac leer:—­