“You get up quicker than a two-legged man,” was his brief comment. “Havn’t so much weight to pull up,” I replied; and paid my fare. From my lofty perch I had a good view up and down Broadway, as well as on each side. Numberless pedestrians thronged the sidewalks, while vehicles, of all kinds, shapes and sizes, crowded together, rolled along and swayed to and fro in the street like a mighty torrent. We had not proceeded far up Broadway, when cluck! went one of the front wheels of our “bus” against another one that was coming down—they got tangled and a “jam-up” ensued. Although I could not see that it was the fault of either driver, they cursed each other in round terms. One driver swore at the other, and the other swore at him; then they swore at each other, in concert, for a quarter of a minute, in the course of which they were very earnest and emphatic in advising each other to emigrate to a certain fabled climate where the mercury in the thermometer seldom falls to the freezing point. The way these drivers curse each other is frightful. If all the men told to go to that hot climate in the course of a year by Broadway drivers, should go, the place would be crowded to suffocation. The expression I refer to seems to be a favorite one among the drivers of vehicles on Broadway; and I presume, that on that thoroughfare there are more men urged to visit Erebus in one day, then there are warned against it in all the rest of the land in a whole year. For about two miles up Broadway, the rattle of omnibuses, express-wagons, drays, furniture-cars, buggies, barouches, cabriolets, etc., was really bewildering. As I looked upon the busy streams of men that hurried along the sidewalks—their faces all strange to me, yet no two alike—and saw the rumbling carriages, all crowding forward as though life depended on their speed, I could not help thinking of this stanza in Byron’s Childe Harold: “But ’midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,   To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,  And roam along the world’s tired denizen,   With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;  Minions of splendor, shrinking from distress!   None that with kindred consciousness endued,  If we were not, would seem to smile the less,   Of all that flattered, followed, sought or sued,  This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!” Every one who has had any experience in the matter, must have observed that a person is more lonely in a crowded city, where he is unacquainted, than in the depths of the forest where no human being is seen.