anding by,
looking about him with great unconcern; and a crowd, shouting and
screaming with delight, cooling their flushed faces against the glass
windows of a chemist's shop.--'What's the matter here, can you tell
me?'--'O'ny a cab, sir.'--'Anybody hurt, do you know?'--'O'ny the fare,
sir. I see him a turnin' the corner, and I ses to another gen'lm'n
"that's a reg'lar little oss that, and he's a comin' along rayther sweet,
an't he?"--"He just is," ses the other gen'lm'n, ven bump they cums agin
the post, and out flies the fare like bricks.' Need we say it was the
red cab; or that the gentleman with the straw in his mouth, who emerged
so coolly from the chemist's shop and philosophically climbing into the
little dickey, started off at full gallop, was the red cab's licensed
driver?

The ubiquity of this red cab, and the influence it exercised over the
risible muscles of justice itself, was perfectly astonishing. You walked
into the justice-room of the Mansion-house; the whole court resounded
with merriment. The Lord Mayor threw himself back in his chair, in a
state of frantic delight at his own joke; every vein in Mr. Hobler's
countenance was swollen with laughter, partly at the Lord Mayor's
facetiousness, but more at his own; the constables and police-officers
were (as in duty bound) in ecstasies at Mr. Hobler and the Lord Mayor
combined; and the very paupers, glancing respectfully at the beadle's
countenance, tried to smile, as even he relaxed. A tall, weazen-faced
man, with an impediment in his speech, would be endeavouring to state a
case of imposition against the red cab's driver; and the red cab's
driver, and the Lord Mayor, and Mr. Hobler, would be having a little fun
among themselves, to the inordinate delight of everybody but the
complainant. In the end, justice would be so tickled with the red
cab-driver's native humour, that the fine would be mitigated, and he
would go away full gallop, in the red cab, to impose on somebody else
without loss of time.

The driver of the red cab, confident in the strength of his own moral
principles, like many other philosophers, was wont to set the feelings
and opinions of society at complete defiance. Generally speaking,
perhaps, he would as soon carry a fare safely to his destination, as he
would upset him--sooner, perhaps, because in that case he not only got
the money, but had the additional amusement of running a longer heat
against some smart rival. But society