[Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens]@TWC D-Link bookSketches by Boz CHAPTER XVII--THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, AND THE FIRST OMNIBUS CAD 4/16
Any instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab, is wholly unnecessary if you are going any distance, because the probability is, that you will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third mile. We are not aware of any instance on record in which a cab-horse has performed three consecutive miles without going down once.
What of that? It is all excitement.
And in these days of derangement of the nervous system and universal lassitude, people are content to pay handsomely for excitement; where can it be procured at a cheaper rate? But to return to the red cab; it was omnipresent.
You had but to walk down Holborn, or Fleet-street, or any of the principal thoroughfares in which there is a great deal of traffic, and judge for yourself.
You had hardly turned into the street, when you saw a trunk or two, lying on the ground: an uprooted post, a hat-box, a portmanteau, and a carpet-bag, strewed about in a very picturesque manner: a horse in a cab standing 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.
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