It was about noon of a dark day late in September, and a long-threatened drizzle of hail chilled the air, as Harry Brackett came out of the Apollo House and stood on the corner of Fourth Avenue, waiting for a cross-town car. He was going down-town to the office of the _Gotham Gazette_ to write up an interview he had just had with the latest British invader of these United States, Lady Smith-Smith, the fair authoress of the very popular novel _Smile and be a Villain Still_, five rival editions of which were then for sale everywhere in New York. Harry Brackett intended to ride past Union Square to Sixth Avenue in the cross-town car, and then to go to the _Gotham Gazette_ by the elevated railway, so he transferred ten cents for the fare of the latter and five cents for the fare of the former from his waistcoat pocket to a little pocket in his overcoat. Then he buttoned the overcoat tightly about him, as the raw wind blew harshly across the city from river to river. He looked down the street for the car; it was afar off, on the other side of Third Avenue, and he was standing on the corner of Fourth Avenue. "A bob-tail car," said Harry Brackett to himself, "is like a policeman: it is never here just when it is wanted. And yet it is a necessary evil--like the policeman again. Perhaps there is here a philosophical thought that might be worked up as a comic editorial article for the fifth column. 'The Bob-tail Car'--why, the very name is humorous. And there are lots of things to be said about it. For instance, I can get something out of the suggestion that the heart of a coquette is like a bob-tail car, there is always room for one more; but I suppose I must not venture on any pun about 'ringing the belle.' Then I can say that the bob-tail car is a one-horse concern, and is therefore a victim of the healthy American hatred of one-horse concerns. It has no past; no gentleman of the road ever robbed its passengers; no road-agent nowadays would think of 'holding it up.' Perhaps that's why there is no poetry about a bob-tail car, as there is about a stage-coach. Even Rudolph Vernon, the most modern of professional poets, wouldn't dream of writing verses on 'Riding in a Bob-tail Car.' Wasn't it Heine who said that the monks of the Middle Ages thought that Greek was a personal invention of the devil, and that he agreed with them? That's what the bob-tail car is--a personal invention of the devil. The stove-pipe hat, the frying-pan, the tenement-house, and the bob-tail car--these are the choicest and the chief of the devil's gifts to New York. Why doesn't that car come? confound it! Although it cannot swear itself, it is the cause of much swearing!" Just then the car came lumbering along and bumping with a repeated jar as its track crossed the tracks on Fourth Avenue. Harry Brackett jumped on it as it passed the corner where he stood. His example was followed by a stranger, who took the seat opposite to him.