Domestic fiction; Short stories; Suburban life -- Fiction
a number of colored ladies waiting to get into the car, or to get out
of it,--usually one solemn mother in Ethiopia, and two or three mirthful
daughters, who find it hard to suppress a sense of adventure, and to
keep in the laughter that struggles out through their glittering
teeth and eyes, and who place each other at a disadvantage by divers
accidental and intentional bumps and blows. If they are to get out, the
old lady is not certain of the place where, and, after making the car
stop, and parleying with the conductor, returns to her seat, and is
mutely held up to public scorn by one taciturn wink of the conductor's
eye.
Among horse-car types, I am almost ashamed to note one so common and
observable as that middle-aged lady who gets aboard and will not see the
one vacant seat left, but stands tottering at the door, blind and
deaf to all the modest beckonings and benevolent gasps of her
fellow-passengers. An air as of better days clings about her; she seems
a person who has known sickness and sorrow; but so far from pitying her,
you view her with inexpressible rancor, for it is plain that she
ought to sit down, and that she will not. But for a point of honor the
conductor would show her the vacant place; this forbidding, however, how
can he? There she stands and sniffs drearily when you glance at her, as
you must from time to time, and no wild turkey caught in a trap was ever
more incapable of looking down than this middle-aged (shall I say also
unmarried?) lady.
Of course every one knows the ladies and gentlemen who sit
cater-cornered, and who will not move up; and equally familiar is
that large and ponderous person, who, feigning to sit down beside you,
practically sits down upon you, and is not incommoded by having your
knee under him. He implies by this brutal conduct that you are taking up
more space than belongs to you, and that you are justly made an example
of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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