the passage of the cars up and down the street, and still the swarming crowds clustered and hung on to straps and backs of seats wherever they could find foot-hold and standing room. But all alike, in payment for this demoniacal means of locomotion, put their five cents into the hot and grimy hands of the conductor, from which, by occult and subtle processes, they were gradually transformed into the decorations of the yachts and palaces of the owners of the line. Democracy and discomfort, too, held equal sway in the crowded trams of the elevated railway which roared by overhead down Sixth Avenue, in the carriages of which tired millionaires and tired milliners sat stewing side by side, with screeching whistles, grinding brakes, and the vomiting forth of the foul smoke from soft coal; for a strike of some kind was in progress in Pennsylvania, and the men who had stored coal and also engineered the strike were reaping a million dollars a day in increased prices and slight inconvenience to a hundred million people, for the thick pungent smoke poured in wreaths into the first-floor windows of the dingy, dirty habitations of the street. But the train passed by on the trembling and jarring trestles, and the inconvenience passed also, till the next train came. Thunder of the passing trains above; rumbling of the electric cars; roar of heavy, iron-shod wheels of drays on the uneven, ill-paved cobbles of the street; jostling of the foot passengers on the side-walks, as they streamed in and out from the rickety wooden staircases of the elevated railway, from the crammed, perspiring cars, from dingy, sour-smelling restaurants; shouts of the newsboys with sheaves of ill-printed newspapers under their arms, giving horrible details of the latest murder, and abominable prints of the victim's false teeth, shoes, and the dress she had last been seen in; the thump-thump of the engines in the _Herald_ office; the sickening stew of the streets; the sickening heat of the skies--Democracy, or 'Everyone for himself.'