CHAPTER III.

THE CABMAN’S CHATTER.

Knowing that a hackman knew as much of city life if not more, than any other one man out of 10,000, I climbed on the box of a hack and asked an old-timer to drive me around town.

“All right boss, get up here and I’ll drive you to the Queen’s taste.”

After some general conversation I drifted to the subject of what sights and sounds a hackman sees and hears after nightfall.

“I’ve seen too much of that to my own sorrow, as you know,” my companion said. “If I had seen less of it, instead of being another man’s servant, I would have had a carriage of my own. Not that there ain’t more money to be made at night than in the day time if a man holds a good sharp rein on himself. A fellow that keeps his eye on the main chance and knows how to keep a stiff upper lip will make dollars and dollars.”

“I suppose your work has given you a big insight into the wickedness of a great city.”

“What I don’t know of the blackguards, men and women, in this town ain’t worth knowing. I am up to every scheme that has ever been tried, I believe. I tell you, we hackmen are about as fly as they make them.”

“You can’t all be extra ‘fly,’” I said.

“Well, there are a lot of new fellows in the business, and they are regular chumps. It’s them that spoils everything. They don’t know the kind of men to strike for a good fat fare, and when they do they bungle it, and get themselves in the papers and give the hackmen a bad name. The business is overrun. Everybody that knows how to put on a horse-collar now wants to drive hack. They see that it is a job which there ain’t any hard work in. But there’s any amount of dirty work for us. We’re out in all sorts of weather, sun and rain and frost. We’re liable to be out till all hours of the night and up by daylight the next morning to catch a train. Then, if we want to make a cent, we have to do everything we’re asked. It’s quite a common snap to have a stranger come to you at the Union station and ask you to drive him up to one of them houses. Now, just look at such work as that—acting as a bad woman’s directory. But I don’t know of a hackman on the stand who won’t take the job. You bet your life I make them fellows pay accordin’ to a special tariff. Do you know, last summer I drove an old fellow from Parry Sound up to a house on Little Nelson street. When he paid me my fare I saw he had a big wad of bills. He told me to come back next day about two o’clock, as he wanted to be driven to a sister of his who lived on the Kingston road. I called for him next afternoon, but the old man was not ready to go, and would you believe, I called for that old tarrier for five days, and on the fifth day he didn’t have a picayune. I had to drive him to Singer’s pawn shop, where he put up his watch and chain for money enough to take him home. He never saw his sister, and I often wondered what yarn he told the folks at home about his visit to town.”

“Do you suppose they robbed him?”

“Oh! not exactly robbed him, but I heard afterwards that the old fool was offering prizes of five dollar notes for whoever could kick highest. Do you know that if it wasn’t for the strangers half of these places would have to shut their doors.”

“I believe you are right.”

“I know it. Why, the missuses of these places know that so well that a hackman who always takes such fares to her place is welcome to an occasional bottle of beer, and any driving that she has to do is given exclusively to him.”

“Well, sir, I am sorry to have to say it, but it’s a mighty poor business for a respectable man to have to engage in.”

“Oh, indeed, I know it, but still I discovered something worse even than that the other night. A young fellow hired me not very long ago. He said: ‘I want to look for a certain person on King street, so I’d like you to drive very slowly along the south side close to the sidewalk.’ I said all right, and I did as I was told. Every once in a while he would say ‘A little slower, cabby,’ and I saw he was peering out of the window. By gob, says I, he is some American fly-cop after someone. But I didn’t think that long. I heard him say something, and thinking he was speaking to me I leaned over and found he was talking to a young girl on the sidewalk. I heard her say: ‘get out, you sneak.’ I was on to him then. He just did it once more, when I jumps off the hack and told the girl to stop for a second, and I would see that the man who insulted her was punished. I hauled him out of the carriage and told him to pay me $3. He made a grand kick. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘there will be a policeman by here in a minute.’ That settled it. He paid me and escaped.”

“That was a case where virtue was its own reward.”

“Yes sir; three dollars for ten minutes’ work. I was telling some of the boys on the stand about my adventure, and some of them were saying that there was a gentleman in the town here who used his private carriage for making mashes on young girls along the street after dark. A handsome carriage and a pair of horses is more than some girls can resist.”

“What was the most exciting thing that ever happened you as a hackman?”

“Well now, that would be pretty hard to say. Oh, as a general thing there is nothing ever very special happens to a hackman. The time the block-paving was going on on King and Queen streets, last summer, I had a funny experience. I was on the York street stand one night when a young man with a black beard came up to me. There was a young woman with him, not very good-looking but pretty nicely dressed. He asked for a certain hackman. Well, we don’t care, as a rule, about putting fares out of our own paw into that of any other driver. But this fellow happened to be next hack to me, and heard his name. Anyway, they got in, and I heard the man say, ‘Drive me to the Humber.’ Jim’s going away left me first hack on the stand. I thought no more about it, but in a few minutes a real pretty woman came up to me and described this man, and asked me if I had seen him. I told her he had gone into a hack with a lady. You ought just to have seen that woman’s eyes when I told her that. ‘If you can catch—no, I think she said overtake—overtake that hack, said she, I’ll give you $5.’ Well, now, I knew they had gone to the Humber, and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t drive very fast, so I bundled her in and got on the box. I wasn’t very sure how far they had got with the block-paving on Queen street, but I wanted to strike what was fit to drive on as soon as possible, so as to make sure I wouldn’t pass the hack. So I went along Richmond street to Esther and when I got there I found the street full of blocks. This kept me back, and we didn’t catch that darned hack until we were on the lake shore road. When we got even with it I said, ‘Jimmy, stop your load, I want to speak to you a minute.’ He stopped, and when I assisted my fare out she was trembling like a leaf. She just went over to the other hack and looked in. I just saw her reach in her two hands and when she took ’em out she held in them the other woman’s hat and feathers. She threw that on the ground and trampled on them and then reached for the other girl again. She fairly skull-dragged her out of the hack. I believe she would have choked her if I and another cabman hadn’t pulled her away. And do you know, that big chump in the hack never interfered or said a word. He had a black beard and mustache, and his face was as white as a sheet. As soon as we pulled her away she just sat down in the sand and commenced to cry as if her heart would break. Then the man came out of the hack and came up to her: ‘For heaven’s sake, Kate, don’t make an exhibition of yourself,’ he said. Well, sir, women are the darnedest fools you ever saw. If she had gone to work and scratched the nose off her husband I’d never have interfered, but instead of that she tackles the woman, and when that mean villain began to talk to her and raised her up out of the sand she quieted down and drove off with him in Jim’s hack. Oh women are queer ones. I’ll bet that she puts all the blame on the other woman, and thought her husband was a perfect angel, who had been led astray by a designin’ woman—that’s what they call it. Well, I drove the girlie back to town, and when she had time to think she was hopping mad. Every time she’d look at her mashed hat she wanted to go and find that woman. She said she had as much right to him as the other woman, because he paid attentions to her before he was married, and only married the other woman because she was better fixed than she was. ‘Yes, and better looking,’ I said to myself. But the strangest thing that happened that night was that I was so flustrated that I let that woman go off without ever asking for my $5. But it was all right. A boy came up to me on the stand next day and handed me an envelope with a $10 bill and a slip of paper inside with writing on it, ‘Fare to Humber and back.’”