Thorsen was a heavy, dusty, tobacco-bestrewn individual of sixty-six, who was a little dull but genial. He was in the paint business, and always wore a very light steel-gray suit much crinkled in the seat and arms. “Perhaps that’s what’s the matter with them, Albert,” chirped up Solon Kaempfaert, one of his cronies on the board. The sally drew a laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. I see the rest of you on board often enough.” “Why, I tell you what’s the matter with them,” replied Kaffrath. “They’re dirty, and they’re flimsy, and the windows rattle so you can’t hear yourself think. The track is no good, and the filthy straw we keep in them in winter is enough to make a person sick. We don’t keep the track in good repair. I don’t wonder people complain. I’d complain myself.” “Oh, I don’t think things are as bad as all that,” put in Onias C. Skinner, the president, who had a face which with its very short side-whiskers was as bland as a Chinese god. He was sixty-eight years of age. “They’re not the best cars in the world, but they’re good cars. They need painting and varnishing pretty badly, some of them, but outside of that there’s many a good year’s wear in them yet. I’d be very glad if we could put in new rolling-stock, but the item of expense will be considerable. It’s these extensions that we have to keep building and the long hauls for five cents which eat up the profits.” The so-called “long hauls” were only two or three miles at the outside, but they seemed long to Mr. Skinner. “Well, look at the South Side,” persisted Kaffrath. “I don’t know what you people are thinking of. Here’s a cable system introduced in Philadelphia. There’s another in San Francisco. Some one has invented a car, as I understand it, that’s going to run by electricity, and here we are running cars—barns, I call them—with straw in them. Good Lord, I should think it was about time that some of us took a tumble to ourselves!” “Oh, I don’t know,” commented Mr. Skinner. “It seems to me we have done pretty well by the North Side. We have done a good deal.” Directors Solon Kaempfaert, Albert Thorsen, Isaac White, Anthony Ewer, Arnold C. Benjamin, and Otto Matjes, being solemn gentlemen all, merely sat and stared. The vigorous Kaffrath was not to be so easily repressed, however. He repeated his complaints on other occasions. The fact that there was also considerable complaint in the newspapers from time to time in regard to this same North Side service pleased him in a way. Perhaps this would be the proverbial fire under the terrapin which would cause it to move along.