Lights and Shadows of New York Life: or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
Lights and Shadows of New York Life: or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Apropos of this method, a talkative Jehu said to me one morning, "When I
was a drivin' on the Knickerbocker," a line that ran some twenty years
ago from South Ferry through Broadway, Bleecker, and Eighth avenue, to
Twenty-third street, "there was a middle-aged man that used to ride
reg'lar; all the fellows got to knowin' him. Well, he'd get in and hand
up a ten dollar note--you know the fare was only six cents then--and we
never had so much 'bout us, so, of course, he'd ride for nothin'; well,
that fellow stuck me five mornin's straight, and I sort o' got tired of
it; so on the six' day I went to the office and says to the Boss,
'There's a man ridin' free on this line. All the fellows knows him; he
gives 'em all a ten dollar note and they can't break it. He's rid with
me these last five mornin's, an' I'm goin' for him to-day, I want ten
dollars in pennies, an' six fares out. If he rides I'll git square with
him.' So the Boss he gives me nine dollars and sixty-four cents all in
pennies--you know they was all big ones then--an' they weighed some, I
tell you. When I got down to Fourteenth street he hailed me. Then the
fares used to pay when they got out. So he hands up his note; I looked
at it--it was on the "Dry Dock"--an' I hands him down the pennies. Well,
how he did blow about it an' said how he wouldn't take 'em. Well, says
I, then I'll keep it all. Well, he was the maddest fellow you ever seen;
he was hoppin'! But he got out an' some one inside hollers out, 'Put
some one on the other side or you'll capsize,' an' he thought it was me.
He jumped on the sidewalk an' he called me everything he could lay his
tongue to, an' I a la'ffin' like blazes. Says he, 'I'll report you, you
old thief,' an' I drove off. Well, I told the Boss, an' he says, 'Let
him come, I'll talk to him,' but he never made no complaint there."
Said another: "A lady got in with me one day an' handed up a fifty cent
stamp. I put down forty cents. I don't never look gen'rally, but this
time I see a man take the change an' put it in his pocket. Pretty soon a
man rings the bell an' says, 'Where's the lady's change?' Well, I thinks
here's a go, an' I points to the man and says, 'That there gentleman put
it in his pocket.' Well, that fellow looked like a sheet, an' a
thunder-cloud an' all through the rainbow. He never said nothing but
pulled out the change, gave it up, an' then he got out an' went 'round a
corner like mad. Some don't wait like he did tho', but gits out right
off. One day a chap got out an' another follered him, an they had it out
on the street there, an' we all was a looking on."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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