The Silly Syclopedia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 62 pages of information about The Silly Syclopedia.

The Silly Syclopedia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 62 pages of information about The Silly Syclopedia.

SEAT.  A mythical place in a street car where many are called but few are chosen.  For instance: 

      Little Jack Horner
      Sat in a corner
  Riding down town on the “L.” 
      He jumped to his feet
      Gave a lady his seat—­
  I’m a liar, but don’t it sound well.

—­Oliver Goldsmith, page 34.

SARDINE-CAR.  A term of endearment given to crowded street cars.

* * * * *

Marcus Aurelius thus describes the sardine-car in his “Meditations”—­see page 946—­as follows: 

The sardine-cars consist of fifty people trying to squeeze into a space that was built only for a Pajama hat and two newspapers.

The seats in the sardine-cars run sideways; the passengers run edgeways, and the life insurance agents run any old way when they see these cars coming.

[Illustration]

The sardine-car is the best genteel imitation of a rough-house that has ever been invented.

The are called “Sardine Cars” because the conductor has to let the passengers out with a can-opener.

Brave and strong men climb into a street car and they are full of health and life and vigor, but a few blocks up the road they fall out backwards and inquire feebly for a sanitarium.

To ride on the street cars in a big city of an evening brings out all that is in a man, including a lot of loud words he didn’t know he had.

The last census shows us that the street cars in the city of New York have more ways of producing nervous prostration and palpitation of the brain to the square inch than the combined population of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Tinkersdam and Gotterdammerung.

To get in some of the street cars about six o’clock is a problem, and to get out again is an assassination.

One evening I rode from Forty-second Street to Fifty-ninth without once touching the floor with my feet.

Part of the time I used the outposts of a stout gentleman to come between me and the ground, and during the rest of the occasion I hung on to a strap and swung out wild and free, like the Japanese flag on a windy day.

Some of our street cars lead a double life, because they are used all winter to act the part of a refrigerator.

It is a cold day when we cannot find it colder in the street cars.

In Germany we find Germans in the cars, but in America we find germs.

That is because this country is young and impulsive.

The germs in the street cars are extremely sociable and will often follow a stranger all the way home.

Often while riding in the street cars I have felt a germ rubbing against my ankle like a kitten, but being a gentleman, I did not reach down and kick it away because the law says we must not be disrespectful to the dumb brutes of the field.

Many of our street cars are made out of the same idea as a can of condensed milk.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Silly Syclopedia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.