Sartinly that cab was one of the darndest queer animals that ever run arter a hoss. It looked like a set of stairs on wheels, with a great overgrown leather trunk sot on eend half way up, with the lid turned over one side. The horse was hitched to the lowermost step, and on the top step of all, clear back, sot a feller histed up in the air with a great long whip, and lines that reached clear over the hull consarn to the horse's head, and this chap was the driver; but he looked as if he'd been sot there wrong eend foremost, and felt awfully streaked and top-heavy about it. It raly was curious to watch the chap as he laid his lines on the top of the box and crept down stairs to stow away my saddle-bags and the hair trunk that marm gin me. When he'd got through, I jest lifted one foot from the ground, and there I sot in a little cushioned pen, like a rooster in a strange coop, or a rat in an empty meal bin. The feller slam'd tu the door and went up the steps behind agin, then I ketched sight of the lines a dangling over head, like a couple of ribbon snakes a twisting about in the sunshine; and away we went trundling along like a great oversized wheelbarrow, with a horse before, a driver behind, and a poor unfortunate critter like me cooped in the middle, with a trunk and pair of saddle-bags for company. Well, on we went hitch-a-te-hitch, jerk-a-ty-jerk through the carts and horses till we got out of the slip, and then we kept on a leetle more regular till by-and-by the horse he stopped all of himself jest afore the Astor House. "Wal," sez I to the driver, a feeling in my trousers' pocket for a ninepence--for the nigger told me that them new fangled cabs had sot up a sort of cheap opposition to the hacks--so sez I, "Wal, what's the damage?" "Only a dollar," sez he, a giving my saddle-bags and trunk a jerk onto the steps, and eying my old dandy clothes sort of supercilious, as if he thought it would be a tough job for me to hand over the chink. I begun to rile up a leetle, but arter a minit I happened to think that no ginuine gentleman ever gits mad with sich a ruff scuff, so I jest looked in his face, and sez I, "How you talk!" With that I gin him a quarter of a dollar, for I didn't want to be mean; but the varmint begun to bluster up as if he wanted to kick up a tantrum. I didn't seem to mind it, but the critter hung on yit for a whole dollar, like a dog to a sassafras root, and when some waiters cum down and took away my things, he followed, and ketching hold of the saddle-bags, said the things shouldn't go till he'd got his pay. With that I went up to him agin, and sez I, "Make yourself scarce, you etarnal mean coot, or I'll give you the purtyest specimen of Weathersfield sole leather that you ever sot eyes on--one that'll send you up them wheelbarrow steps of yourn swifter than you cum down, a darned sight. You needn't look at me--I'm in arnest, and I'll du it, or my name aint Jonathan Slick."