Tales of Mean Streets

re for all the conductors in his wake till there were no more revelers left to swarm the cars. For it was Saturday night, and many a week’s wages were a-knocking down; and the publicans this side

further Stratford, by the town hall, the church, and the Martyrs’ Memorial, they crowd the cars. For one thing, it is a long half mile, and the week’s work is over. Also, the car being swamped, it is o

ing care to sit at the extreme fore-end inside. In the broad street the market clamored and flared, its lights and shadows flickering and fading about the

struggling and blaspheming, who stormed and wrangled in at the door and up the stairs. There were lads and men whooping and flushed, there were girls and women screaming choruses; and in a moment the seats were packed, knees were taken, and there was not an inch of standing room. The conductor cried “All full!” and tugged

she could understand; and the quiet mechanic, whose knees had been invaded by an unsteady young woman in a crushed hat, tried to look pleased. My own knees were saved from capture by the near neighborhood of an enormous female, seated partly on the seat and partly on myself, snorting and gulping with sleep, her head upon the next man’s shoulder. (To offer your seat to a standing woman would, as beseems a foreign antic, have been visited by the ribaldry of the whole crowd.)

w and laborious progress with the fares nearest him, turned his head. A man had jumped upon the footboard and a passenger’s toes. A scuffle and a fight, and both had rolled off into the mire, and got left behind. “Ain’t they fon

r the one or two that, asked now or not, seemed likely to pay at the journey’s end. The snacking women resumed their talk; the choristers their singing; the rumble of the wheel

of the little ones, standing before her mother, was pushed almost to falling; and the harlot, seeing her chance, snatched the child upon

persuaded the standing passengers to shove toward the door. The child had fallen asleep in the streetwalker’s arms. “Jinny!” cried the mother, reachin

voice (like that of one sick with shouting): “She can se

the child’s hat and shawl. “She mustn’t go to sleep

ith a propitiatory grin. “‘Ow old is she

e by the side of her knee, where a younger one was s

n’s neighbor rose, and let her fall over on the seat, whence, awaking with a loud grunt and an incoherent curse, she rolled after the rest. The conductor, clamant and bedeviled, was caught between the two pellmells, and, demanding fares and gripping his satchel, was carri

the pavement, leaving the third on the step of the car. The harlot, lingering, lifted the child again, lifted her rather high, and set her on the path with the others. Then she walked away toward the Bomb

took a corner seat near the door; and the tram-car,