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From the Cabby's Seat

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps,
than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying
seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles,
of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is
Jehu, and you are goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, to
cabby you are only a Fare, he takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles
your vertebrae and sets you down.

When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with
legal rates you come to know what contempt is; if you find that you
have left your pocketbook behind you are made to realise the mildness
of Dante's imagination.

It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of
purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's
peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter
on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of
inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a
toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap--you, before whom butlers
cringe on solid land--and must squeak upward through a slit in your
peripatetic sarcophagus to make your feeble wishes known.

Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant; you are contents. You
are a cargo at sea, and the "cherub that sits up aloft" has Davy
Jones's street and number by heart.

One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement-
house next door but one to McGary's Family Cafe. The sounds seemed
to emanate from the apartments of the Walsh family. The sidewalk was
obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbours, who opened a
lane from time to time for a hurrying messenger bearing from McGary's
goods pertinent to festivity and diversion. The sidewalk contingent
was engaged in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to
eliminate the news that Norah Walsh was being married.

In the fulness of time there was an eruption of the merry-makers to
the sidewalk. The uninvited guests enveloped and permeated them, and
upon the night air rose joyous cries, congratulations, laughter and
unclassified noises born of McGary's oblations to the hymeneal scene.

Close to the curb stood Jerry O'Donovan's cab. Night-hawk was Jerry
called; but no more lustrous or cleaner hansom than his ever closed
its doors upon point lace and November violets. And Jerry's horse!
I am within bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats
until one of those old ladies who leave their dishes unwashed at home
and go about having expressmen arrested, would have smiled--yes,
smiled--to have seen him.

Among the shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had of
Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of
his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny
of millionaires and by contumacious fares; of his brass-buttoned
green coat, admired in the vicinity of McGary's. It was plain that
Jerry had usurped the functions of his cab, and was carrying a
"load." Indeed, the figure may be extended and he be likened to a
bread-waggon if we admit the testimony of a youthful spectator, who
was heard to remark "Jerry has got a bun."

>From somewhere among the throng in the street or else out of the thin
stream of pedestrians a young woman tripped and stood by the cab.
The professional hawk's eye of Jerry caught the movement. He made a
lurch for the cab, overturning three or four onlookers and himself--
no! he caught the cap of a water-plug and kept his feet. Like a
sailor shinning up the ratlins during a squall Jerry mounted to his
professional seat. Once he was there McGary's liquids were baffled.
He seesawed on the mizzenmast of his craft as safe as a Steeple Jack
rigged to the flagpole of a skyscraper.

"Step in, lady," said Jerry, gathering his lines. The young woman
stepped into the cab; the doors shut with a bang; Jerry's whip
cracked in the air; the crowd in the gutter scattered, and the fine
hansom dashed away 'crosstown.

When the oat-spry horse had hedged a little his first spurt of speed
Jerry broke the lid of his cab and called down through the aperture
in the voice of a cracked megaphone, trying to please:

"Where, now, will ye be drivin' to?"

"Anywhere you please," came up the answer, musical and contented.

"'Tis drivin' for pleasure she is," thought Jerry. And then he
suggested as a matter of course:

"Take a thrip around in the park, lady. 'Twill be ilegant cool and
fine."

"Just as you like," answered the fare, pleasantly.

The cab headed for Fifth avenue and sped up that perfect street.
Jerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGary
were disquieted and they sent new fumes to his head. He sang an
ancient song of Killisnook and brandished his whip like a baton.

Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to
right and left at the lights and houses. Even in the shadowed hansom
her eyes shone like stars at twilight.

When they reached Fifty-ninth street Jerry's head was bobbing and his
reins were slack. But his horse turned in through the park gate and
began the old familiar nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned
back, entranced, and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odours of
grass and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts, knowing
his ground, struck into his by-the-hour gait and kept to the right of
the road.

Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry's increasing torpor.
He raised the hatch of his storm-tossed vessel and made the inquiry
that cabbies do make in the park.

"Like shtop at the Cas-sino, lady? Gezzer r'freshm's, 'n lish'n the
music. Ev'body shtops."

"I think that would be nice," said the fare.

They reined up with a plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab doors
flew open. The fare stepped directly upon the floor. At once she
was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of
lights and colours. Some one slipped a little square card into her
hand on which was printed a number--34. She looked around and saw
her cab twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the
waiting mass of carriages, cabs and motor cars. And then a man who
seemed to be all shirt-front danced backward before her; and next she
was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a
jessamine vine.

There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted
a collection of small coins in a thin purse, and received from them
license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and
absorbing it all--the new-coloured, new-shaped life in a fairy palace
in an enchanted wood.

At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and gems
of the world. And now and then one of them would look curiously at
Jerry's fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the
kind that is tempered by the word "foulard," and a plain face that
wore a look of love of life that the queens envied.

Twice the long hands of the clocks went round, Royalties thinned from
their ~al fresco~ thrones, and buzzed or clattered away in their
vehicles of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of
leather and baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the plain
figure sitting almost alone.

Jerry's fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply:

"Is there anything coming on the ticket?" she asked.
A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it
to the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number.
Only three hansoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and
routed out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the
captain's bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare
entered, and the cab whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park
along the shortest homeward cuts.

At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion
seized upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to
him. He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his
phonographic voice, like a lead plummet, through the aperture:

"I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip.
Have ye got th' dough?"

"Four dollars!" laughed the fare, softly, "dear me, no. I've only
got a few pennies and a dime or two."

Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter
of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity.
He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut
viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and
ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a
late truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he
knew his recourse, and made for it at a gallop.

At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. He
flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground.

"Come on, you," he said, roughly.

His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain
face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station.
A gray-moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and
the cabby were no strangers.

"Sargeant," began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous
tones of complaint. "I've got a fare here that--"

Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog
set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.

"A fare, sargeant," he continued, with a grin, "that I want to
inthroduce to ye. It's me wife that I married at ould man Walsh's
this avening. And a divil of a time we had, ‘tis thrue. Shake hands
wid th' sargeant, Norah, and we'll be off to home."

Before stepping into the cab Norah sighed profoundly.

"I've had such a nice time, Jerry," said she.




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