He Explained That The
Part We Were Looking At Was Obsolete, And He Showed Us Another Part,
Which Was Really For Drives Outside The City; But We Agreed To Pay It,
And Set Out Hoping For Good Behavior From Him That Would Make Up The
Difference.
Again we were deceived; at the end he demanded a franc
beyond even his unnatural fare.
I urged that one should be reasonable;
but he seemed to think not, and to avoid controversy I paid the
extortionate franc. I remembered that just a month before, in New York,
I had paid an extortionate dollar in like circumstances.
Nevertheless, that franc above and beyond the stipulated extortion
impoverished me, and when we came to take a rowboat back to our steamer
I beat the boatman down cruelly, mercilessly. He was a poor, lean little
man, with rather a superannuated boat, and he labored harder at the oar
than I could bear to see without noting his exertion to him. This was
fatal; instantly he owned that I was right, and he confessed, moreover,
that he was the father of a family, and that some of his children were
then suffering from sickness as well as want. What could one do but make
the fare up to the first demand of three francs after having got the
price down to one and a half? At the time it seemed to me that I was
somehow by this means getting the better of the cabman who had obliged
me to pay a franc more than his stipulated extortion, but I do not now
hope to make it appear so to the reader.
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