s, with his carriage. His never having seen us, and
approaching us without hesitation, naturally led us to ask how he knew
us. He answered:

"'Oh, I saw you walking through the car before it reached the corner
and standing on the platform when it stopped, so I said to myself,
"There they are!"'"

"I can easily believe you," said Considine, "but in saying that the
etiquette of any public conveyance in New York is interesting from its
varieties of selfishness, oughtn't you to confine your statement to
surface-cars, elevated roads, and ferry-boats, and oughtn't you to make
an exception of that dignified relic of antiquity, the Fifth Avenue
stage? The most uncomfortable vehicle going, yet let me give the angel
his due--in a stage people do move up; everybody waits on everybody
else; hands fare; rings for change, and pays all of the old-fashioned
courtesies which went from a busy city life with the advent of the
conductor, the autocrat of ill manners and indifference."

"Superstition evidently does not obtain in New York on one subject at
least," said Aubrey, "and that is the bad luck supposing to accrue from
crossing a funeral procession. Never in any other city in the world
have I seen such rudeness exhibited toward the following of the dead to
their last resting-place as I have seen in New York. The beautiful
custom in Catholic countries not only of giving them the right of way,
but of the men removing their hats while the procession passes, has
resolved itself into a funeral procession going on the run; the driver
of the hearse watching his chance and fairly ducking between trucks and
surface-cars, jolting the casket over the tracks until I myself have
seen the wreaths slip from their places, and sometimes for five or ten
minutes the hearse separated from its following carriages by a
procession of vehicles which the policeman at the crossing had
permitted to interfere. Such a proceeding is a disgrace to our boasted
civilization. We are not yet too busy nor too poor to allow our
business to pause for a moment to let the solemn procession of the dead
pass uninterrupted and in dignity to its last resting-place. Such
consideration would permit the hearse to be driven at a reasonably slow
pace in keeping with the mournful feelings of its followers. As it is
now, New York funerals go at almost the pace of automobiles."

"My brother once told me," I said, "that I was so slow that some day I
would get run over by a