O. Henry

                    From the Cabby's Seat

THE CABBY HAS HIS POINT OF VIEW. It is more single-minded, perhaps, 
than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying 
seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellowmen as nomadic particles; 
of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, 
and you are goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, to cabby 
you are only a fare. He takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your 
vertebra; and sets you down.
   When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with 
legal rates, you come to know what contempt is; if you find that you 
have left your pocket-book behind you, you are made to realize the 
mildness of Dante's imagination.
   It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of 
purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's 
peculiar construction. The cock-of the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter 
on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of 
inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy 
mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap - you, before whom butlers 
cringe on solid land - and must squeak upward through a slit in your 
peripatetic sarcophagas to make your feeble wishes known.
   Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant; you are contents. You 
are a cargo at sea, and the `cherub that sits up aloft' has Davy 
Jones's street and number by heart.
   One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement-
house next door but one to McGary's Family Cafe. The sounds seemed to 
emanate ftom the apartments of the Walsh family. The sidewalk was 
obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbours, who opened a 
lane from time to time for a hurrying messenger bearing from McGary's 
goods pertinent to festivity and diversion. The sidewalk contingent. 
was engaged in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to 
eliminate the news that Norah Walsh was being married.
   In the fullness of time there was an eruption of the merrymakers to 
the sidewalk. The uninvited guests enveloped and permeated them, and 
upon the night air rose joyous cries, congratulations laughter and 
unclassified noises born of McGary's oblations to the hymeneal scene.
   Close to the kerb stood Jerry O'Donovan's cab. Night-hawk was Jerry 
called; but no more lustrous or cleaner hansom than his ever closed 
its doors upon point lace and November violets. And Jerry's horse! I 
am within bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats until 
one of those old ladies who leave their dishes unwashed at home and go 
about having expressmen arrested, would have smiled - yes, smiled - to 
have seen him.
   Among the shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had 
of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of 
his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny 
of millionaires and by contumacious fares; of his brassbuttoned green 
coat, admired in the vicinity of McGary's. It was plain that Jerry had 
usurped the functions of his cab, and was carrying a `load.' Indeed, 
the figure may be extended and he be likened to a bread-wagon if we 
admit the testimony of a youthful spectator, who was heard to remark 
`Jerry has got a bun.'
   From somewhere among the throng in the street or else out of the 
thin stream of pedestrians a young woman tripped and stood by the cab. 
The professional hawk's eye of Jerry caught the movement. He made a 
lurch for the cab, overturning three or four onlookers and himself - 
no! he caught the cap of a water-plug and kept his feet. Like a sailor 
shinning up the ratlins during a squall, Jerry mounted to his 
professional seat. Once he was there McGary's liquids were baffled. He 
seesawed on the mizzen-mast of his craft as safe as a steeplejack 
rigged to the flagpole of a skyscraper.
   `Step in, lady,' said Jerry, gathering his lines.
   The young woman stepped into the cab; the doors shut with a bang; 
Jerry's whip cracked in the air; the crowd in the gutter scattered, 
and the fine hansom dashed away 'cross-town.
   When the oat-spry horse had hedged a little his first spurt of 
speed Jerry broke the lid of his cab and called down through the 
aperture in the voice of a cracked megaphone trying to please:
   `Where, now, will ye be drivin' to?'
   `Anywhere you please,' came up the answer, musical and contented.
   `'Tis drivin' for pleasure she is,' thought Jerry. And then he 
suggested as a matter of course:
   `Take a thrip around in the park, lady. 'Twill be ilegant cool and 
fine.'
   `Just as you like,' answered the fare pleasantly.
   The cab headed for Fifth Avenue and sped up that perfect street. 
Jerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGary were 
disquieted and they sent new fumes to his head. He sang an ancient 
song of Killisnook and brandished his whip like a baton.
   Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to 
right and left at the lights and houses. Even in the shadowed hansom 
her eyes shone like stars at twilight.
   When they reached Fifty-ninth Street Jerry's head was bobbing and 
his reins were slack. But his horse turned in through the park gate 
and began the old familiar, nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned 
back entranced, and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odours of grass 
and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts, knowing his 
ground, struck into his by-the-hour gait and kept to the right of the 
road.
   Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry's increasing 
torpor. He raised the hatch of his storm-tossed vessel and made the 
inquiry that cabbies do make in the park.
   `Like shtop at the Cas-sino, lady? Gezzer r'freshm's, 'n lish'n the 
music. Ev'body shtops.'
   `I think that would be nice,' said the fare.
   They reined up with a plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab . 
doors flew open. The fare stepped direct(y upon the floor. At once she 
was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of 
lights and colours. Someone slipped a little square card into her hand 
on which was printed a number - 34. She looked around and saw her cab 
twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting 
mass of carriages, cabs and motor-cars. And then a man who seemed to 
be all shirt-front danced backward before her; and next she was seated 
at a little table by a railing over which climbed a Jessamine vine.
   There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted 
a collection of small coins in a thin purse, and received from them 
licence to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and 
absorbing it all - the new-coloured, new-shaped life in a fairy palace 
in an enchanted wood.
   At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and 
gems of the world. And now and then one of them would look curiously 
at Jerry's fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the 
kind that is tempered by the word `foulard,' and a plain face that 
wore a look of love of life that the queens envied.
   Twice the long hands of the clocks went round. Royalties - thinned 
from their alfresco thrones, and buzzed or clattered away ' in their 
vehicles of state. The music retired into eases of wood and
bags of leather and baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the 
plain figure sitting almost alone.
   Jerry's fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply: 
   `Is there anything coming on the ticket?' she asked.
   A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it 
to the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number. 
Only three hansoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and 
routed out Jerry, asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the 
captain's bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, 
and the cab whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the 
shortest homeward cuts.
   At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion 
seized upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to him. 
He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic 
voice, like a lead plummet, through the aperture:
   `I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip. 
Have ye got th' dough?'
   `Four dollars!' laughed the fare softly, `dear me, no. I've only 
got a few pennies and a dime or two.'
   Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oatfed horse. The clatter 
of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity. He 
shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut 
viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and 
ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late 
truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew 
his recourse, and made for it at a gallop.
   At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. 
He flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground. 
   `Come on, you,' he said roughly:
   His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain 
face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station. A 
grey-moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the 
cabby were no strangers.
   `Sargeant,' began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous 
tones of complaint. `I've got a fare here that -'
   Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog 
set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.
   `A fare, sargeant,' he continued, with a grin, `that I want to 
inthroduce to ye. It's me wife that I married at ould man Walsh's this 
avening. And a divil of a time we had, 'tis thrue. Shake hands wid th' 
sargeant, Norah, and we'll be off to home.'
   Before stepping into the cab Norath sighed profoundly. 
   `I've had such a nice time, Jerry,' said she.