Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City: As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"Toronto News
History
Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City: As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"
Toronto News
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel
“Well now, that would be pretty hard to say. Oh, as a general thing
there is nothing ever very special happens to a hackman. The time the
block-paving was going on on King and Queen streets, last summer, I had a
funny experience. I was on the York street stand one night when a young
man with a black beard came up to me. There was a young woman with him,
not very good-looking but pretty nicely dressed. He asked for a certain
hackman. Well, we don’t care, as a rule, about putting fares out of our
own paw into that of any other driver. But this fellow happened to be
next hack to me, and heard his name. Anyway, they got in, and I heard
the man say, ‘Drive me to the Humber.’ Jim’s going away left me first
hack on the stand. I thought no more about it, but in a few minutes a
real pretty woman came up to me and described this man, and asked me if I
had seen him. I told her he had gone into a hack with a lady. You ought
just to have seen that woman’s eyes when I told her that. ‘If you can
catch—no, I think she said overtake—overtake that hack, said she, I’ll
give you $5.’ Well, now, I knew they had gone to the Humber, and I was
pretty sure they wouldn’t drive very fast, so I bundled her in and got on
the box. I wasn’t very sure how far they had got with the block-paving
on Queen street, but I wanted to strike what was fit to drive on as soon
as possible, so as to make sure I wouldn’t pass the hack. So I went
along Richmond street to Esther and when I got there I found the street
full of blocks. This kept me back, and we didn’t catch that darned hack
until we were on the lake shore road. When we got even with it I said,
‘Jimmy, stop your load, I want to speak to you a minute.’ He stopped,
and when I assisted my fare out she was trembling like a leaf. She just
went over to the other hack and looked in. I just saw her reach in her
two hands and when she took ’em out she held in them the other woman’s
hat and feathers. She threw that on the ground and trampled on them and
then reached for the other girl again. She fairly skull-dragged her out
of the hack. I believe she would have choked her if I and another cabman
hadn’t pulled her away. And do you know, that big chump in the hack never
interfered or said a word. He had a black beard and mustache, and his
face was as white as a sheet. As soon as we pulled her away she just
sat down in the sand and commenced to cry as if her heart would break.
Then the man came out of the hack and came up to her: ‘For heaven’s
sake, Kate, don’t make an exhibition of yourself,’ he said. Well, sir,
women are the darnedest fools you ever saw. If she had gone to work and
scratched the nose off her husband I’d never have interfered, but instead
of that she tackles the woman, and when that mean villain began to talk
to her and raised her up out of the sand she quieted down and drove off
with him in Jim’s hack. Oh women are queer ones. I’ll bet that she puts
all the blame on the other woman, and thought her husband was a perfect
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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