we knew it at once for the 'hand-write' of our favorite, facile
and felicitous historian of Tinnecum. He is one of your persons now who
thinks, and not a member of that hum-drum class who only _think_ they
think; moreover, he knows 'how to observe' better even than Miss
MARTINEAU. It was an every-day thing which struck him, in the aspect of
our winter-sleighs, as he rode up in one of them a day or two ago; but
this sketch of '_The Snow-Omnibus_' is not so common: 'PAST midnight! The
embers are dying. The thunder of the city becomes a dull roar, the roar a
murmur: then comes a dead pause, interrupted sometimes by the watchman's
club as it rings on the pavement, or the shrill, solitary whistler
executing the threadbare airs of the opera, or 'Life on the Ocean Wave.'
The door opens without noise. I lift up my nodding head and see Dr.
BARTOLO, his hat like a miller's, and his whiskers fringed with white.
With tread soft as a mouse or an apparition, he illumes his candle, turns
on his heel, and says in a whisper very appropriate to the time, the
place, and the fact conveyed: 'It snows!' Such is the only intimation to
break the magic and the mystery of the early morning, unless it be the
small tinkling of bells like frogs in a brook; a complete shifting or
rather change of scene noiselessly wrought; a foul city purified,
whitened, sparkling, and glorious, like a Scarlet Lady who emerges with
her meretricious charms in chaste robes, chaste as Diana. She taketh the
veil. The virgin-snow is unsullied upon her bosom, just as it dropped
softly out of heaven, undefiled by footsteps, dazzling only to conceal.
'Tis but the momentary semblance of purity. The sun is up. Hark! the
tumult and excitement is begun. The crowds throng and jostle through the
pure element; the horses prance to the gay and perpetual chimes, and
Broadway is the paradise of belles. Underneath all is the obscenity of
filth! What attracts our attention, however, is your snow-omnibus, very
different in looks, spirit and animation from the same lumbering carriage
upon wheels. What do you see in the latter? A set of cross, hungry-looking
men, going up town to dinner, packed together in a magnetizing attitude,
with knees jammed against knees, and eyes wherever they can find a place
to put them; women crushed between stout fellows, and indecently nudged at
every apology of a jolt; in short, a penthouse of ill-humour; twelve '_all
full_' people; whiskerandi, gentle maidens,