The policeman looked from one to the other, and then said:-- “Why, there’s your purse in your lap.” “Yes, I know,” the accuser admitted. “Then, what do you mean by sayin’ that lady stole it?” “I did it out of kindness, constable. The lady has got the hiccoughs, and I wanted to give her a start.” To be accused of having the hiccoughs seemed to annoy the woman in the corner far more than the charge of theft did, and she appealed, excitedly, to the male passenger to say whether or not she had the hiccoughs. He answered boldly that there was not the slightest ground for such an accusation. “But she was going to have them,” the woman by the door declared, an assertion which so astonished the policeman that he felt prompt action was imperative. “Out you come,” he said sharply, and assisted her to make her exit with alacrity. At times the eccentricity of some passengers takes very objectionable forms. Quite recently a well-dressed little woman jumped into an omnibus in Fleet Street, pulled a man out of his seat and sat in it herself, poked her umbrella into another man’s eye, swore horribly at everybody present for about half a minute, then suddenly got up, jumped out without paying, and disappeared down a side street. The man whose eye was injured had to hurry to Charing Cross Hospital. On another occasion a sane-looking man, sitting on top of an omnibus, suddenly started throwing pennies at the silk hats of passers-by and spitting contemptuously at female pedestrians. Before his fellow-passengers had made up their minds whether to pitch him off the omnibus or give him into custody, he walked quietly down the steps and alighted. Many passengers leave strange things in omnibuses, but I have heard of only one man who went away without his clothes. A conductor looking round his omnibus at the end of his day’s work, kicked against a heap of clothes lying on the roof. While examining the articles by the light of his lamp he heard a noise above him, and, looking up, beheld a man, stark naked, climbing into the loft. The poor fellow had gone mad. But of all the eccentric characters known to ’busmen, the most harmless and the most amusing is the respectable-looking little man with a black beard who runs in front of omnibuses, excitedly waving a long stick above his head. He is about forty years of age, dressed generally in black clothes, and sometimes carries a pair of gloves in his hand. He singles out an omnibus, gives a friendly shout to the coachman, darts in front of the horses, and leads the way through the streets, coming occasionally to the side of the omnibus to give passengers an opportunity to throw money to him. He delights in long runs and usually sticks to the omnibus he takes up with until it reaches the end of its journey. He has been known to run with an omnibus from Queen’s Road, Bayswater, through the city, to Burdett Road, E., and then to run back with another.