I understood him at once; saw through him; had done the same thing myself; and admired his penetrative and observant aptitude. Never ride inside an omnibus—I apostrophise, of course, the men folks; for till arrangements are made (and why should they _not_ be made?) for hoisting ladies in an easy-chair to the breezy roof—they can manage such things on board a man-of-war—the vehicular ascent is incommodious, not to say indecorous, for the fair sex. But Ho, ye men, don’t ride inside. A friend of mine had once his tibia fractured by the diagonal brass rod that crosses the door; the door itself being violently slammed to, as is the usual custom, by the conductor. Another of my acquaintance was pitched head foremost from the interior, on the mockingly fallacious cry of “all right” being given—was thrown on his head, and killed. Inside an omnibus you are subjected to innumerable vexations and annoyances. Sticks or parasols are poked in your chest and in the back of your neck, as a polite reminder that somebody wants to get out, and that you must seize the conductor by the skirt of his coat, or pinch him in the calf of the leg, as an equally polite request for him to stop; you are half suffocated by the steam of damp umbrellas; your toes are crushed to atoms as the passengers alight or ascend; you are very probably the next neighbour to persons suffering under vexatious ailments, such as asthma, simple cold in the head, or St. Vitus’s dance; it is ten to one but that you suffer under the plague of babies; and, five days out of the seven, you will have a pickpocket, male or female, for a fellow-passenger. The rumbling, the jumbling, the jolting, and the concussions—the lurking ague in the straw when it is wet, and the peculiar omnibus fleas that lurk in it when it is dry, make the interior of one of these vehicles a place of terror and discomfort; whereas outside all is peace. You have room for your legs; you have the fresh air; you have the lively if not improving conversation of the driver and the conductor, and especially of the right-hand box-seat, who is invariably in some way mysteriously connected with dogs and horses, and a great authority thereupon. Finally, you have the inestimable advantage of surveying the world in its workings as you pass along: of being your own Asmodeus, and unroofing London in a ride from the White Horse Cellar to Hammersmith Gate. The things I have seen from the top of an omnibus!—more markedly in the narrow streets through which, from the main thoroughfare being blocked up by the incessant paving, lighting, sewerage, or electric telegraph communications of underground London, one is compelled to pass. Now a married couple enjoying an animated wrangle in a first-floor front; now a servant-maid entertaining a policeman, or a Life Guardsman, with a heart’s devotion and cold shoulder of mutton, in a far-down area; now a demure maiden lacing her virgin bodice before a cracked triangle of a looking-glass, at