Contract.
Once he had got me safely fastened inside his rickety, creaky
devil-wagon he pulled all the stops all the way out and went tearing
up the crowded boulevard like a comet with a can tied to its tail.
I hammered on the glass and begged him to slow down - that is, I
hammered on the glass and tried to beg him to slow down. For just
such emergencies I had previously stocked up with two French
words - "Doucement!" and "Vite!" I knew that one of those words
meant speed and the other meant less speed, but in the turmoil of
the moment I may have confused them slightly. Anyhow, to be on
the safe side, I yelled "Vite!" a while and then "Doucement" a
while; and then "Doucement" and "Vite!" alternately, and mixed in
a few short, simple Anglo-Saxon cusswords and prayers for dressing.
But nothing I said seemed to have the least effect on that demoniac
scoundrel. Without turning his head he merely shouted back something
unintelligible and threw on more juice.
On and on we tore, slicing against the sidewalk,curving and jibbing,
clattering and careening - now going on two wheels and now on four
- while the lunatic shrieked curses of disappointment at the
pedestrians who scuttled away to safety from our charging onslaughts;
and I held both hands over my mouth to keep my heart from jumping
out into my lap.
I saw, with instantaneous but photographic distinctness, a lady,
with a dog tucked under her arm, who hesitated a moment in our
very path. She was one of the largest ladies I ever saw and the
dog under her arm was certainly the smallest dog I ever saw. You
might say the lady was practically out of dog. I thought we had
her and probably her dog too; but she fell back and was saved by
a matter of half an inch or so. I think, though, we got some of
the buttons off her shirtwaist and the back trimming of her hat.
Then there was a rending, tearing crash as we took a fender off a
machine just emerging from a cross street, but my lunatic never
checked up at all. He just flung a curling ribbon of profanity
over his shoulder at the other driver and bounded onward like a
bat out of the Bad Place. That was the hour when my hair began
to turn perceptibly grayer. And yet, when by a succession of
miracles we had landed intact at my destination, the fiend seemed
to think he had done a praiseworthy and creditable thing. I only
wish he had been able to understand the things I called him - that
is all I wish!
It is by a succession of miracles that the members of his maniacal
craft usually do dodge death and destruction. The providence that
watches over the mentally deficient has them in its care, I guess;
and the same beneficent influence frequently avails to save those
who ride behind them and, to a lesser extent, those who walk ahead.
Once in a while a Paris cabman does have a lucky stroke and garner
in a foot traveler. In an instant a vast and surging crowd convenes.
In another instant the road is impassably blocked. Up rushes a
gendarme and worms his way through the press to the center. He
has a notebook in his hand. In this book he enters the gloating
cabman's name, his age, his address, and his wife's maiden name,
if any; and gets his views on the Dreyfus case; and finds out what
he thinks about the separation of church and state; and tells him
that if he keeps on the way he is headed he will be getting the
cross of the Legion of Honor pretty soon. They shake hands and
embrace, and the cabman cuts another notch in his mudguard, and
gets back on the seat and drives on. Then if, by any chance, the
victim of the accident still breathes, the gendarme arrests him
for interfering with the traffic. It is a lovely system and sweetly
typical.
Under the general classification of thrilling moments in the night
life of Europe I should like to list a carriage trip through the
outskirts of Naples after dark. In the first place the carriage
driver is an Italian driver - which is a shorter way of saying he
is the worst driver living. His idea of getting service out of a
horse is, first to snatch him to a standstill by yanking on the
bit and then to force the poor brute into a gallop by lashing at
him with a whip having a particularly loud and vixenish cracker
on it; and at every occasion to whoop at the top of his voice.
In the second place the street is as narrow as a narrow alley,
feebly lighted, and has no sidewalks. And the rutty paving stones
which stretch from housefront to housefront are crawling with
people and goats and dogs and children. Finally, to add zest to
the affair,there are lots of loose cows mooning about - for at this
hour the cowherd brings his stock to the doors of his patrons.
In an Italian city the people get their milk from a cow, instead
of from a milkman as with us. The milk is delivered on the hoof,
so to speak.
The grown-ups refuse to make way for you to pass and the swarming
young ones repay you for not killing them by pelting pebbles and
less pleasant things into your face. Beggars in all degrees of
filth and deformity and repulsiveness run alongside the carriage
in imminent danger from the wheels, begging for alms.
