But most of the discourse of my scrubwoman is cheerful.  She is a valiant figure, a brave being very fond of the society of her friends (of whom I hold myself to be one), who works late at night, and talks continually.  I know that if you would contrive to find favour with your scrubwoman you would often be like that person told of by mine who “laughed until she thought his heart would break.”

The most brotherly car-conductors, naturally, are those with not over much business, those on lines in remote places.  I remember the loss I suffered not long ago on a suburban car, which results, I am sorry to say, in your loss also.

The bell signalling to stop rang, and a vivaciously got-up woman with an extremely broad-at-the-base, pear-shaped torse, arose and got herself carefully off the car.  The conductor went forward to assist her.  When he returned aft he came inside the car and sat on the last seat with two of us who were his passengers.  The restlessness was in him which betrays that a man will presently unbosom himself of something.  This finally culminated in his remarking, as if simply for something to say to be friendly, “You noticed that lady that just got off back there?  Well,” he continued, leaning forward, having received a look intended to be not discouraging, “that’s the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress;—­that lady’s the mother of Cora Splitts, the little actress.”

“Is that so!” exclaimed one who was his passenger, not wishing to deny him the pleasure he expected of having excited astonishment.  A car conductor leads a hard life, poor fellow, and one should not begrudge him a little pleasure like that.

The conductor twisted away his face for an instant while he spat tobacco-juice.  Thus cleared for action, he returned to the subject of his thoughts.  “That’s the mother of Cora Splitts,” he repeated again.  “She’s at White Plains tonight, Cora is.  Cora and me,” he said, as one that says, “ah, me, what a world it is!”—­“Cora and me was chums once.  Yes, sir; we was chums and went to school together.”  Some valuable reminiscences of the distinguished woman, dating back to days before the world dreamed of what she would become, by one who played with her as a child, doubtless would have been told, but the conductor was interrupted; a great many people got off, some others got on the car just then, and he went forward to collect fares from these, and the thread was broken.

At my journey’s end, I recollect, I went into a public-house.  There was a person there whose presence made a deep impression upon my memory.  A fine stocky lad, with a great square jaw, heavy beery jowls, and a blue-black, bearded chin; in a blue striped collar.  He put both hands firmly on the bar-rail at a good distance apart; straightened his arms taut and his body at right angles with them, so that he resembled a huge carpenter’s square; then curled his back finely in, and said, with a significant