II. THE STAGES.
The stages of New York are a feature of the great city, which must be seen to be appreciated. They are the best to be found on this continent, but are far inferior to the elegant vehicles for the same purpose which are to be seen in London and Paris. The stages of New York are stiff, awkward looking affairs, very difficult to enter or leave, a fact which is sometimes attended with considerable danger on the part of ladies. To ride in one is to incur considerable fatigue, for they are as rough as an old-fashioned country wagon. Unlike the European omnibuses, they have no seats on top, but an adventurous passenger may, if he chooses, clamber up over the side and seat himself by the Jehu in charge. From this lofty perch he can enjoy the best view of the streets along the route of the vehicle, and if the driver be inclined to loquacity, he may hear many a curious tale to repay him for his extra exertion.
The stages, however, as inconvenient as they are, constitute the favorite mode of conveyance for the better class of New Yorkers. The fare on these lines is ten cents, and is sufficiently high to exclude from them the rougher and dirtier
portion of the community, and one meets with more courtesy and good breeding here than in the street cars. They are cleaner than the cars, and ladies are less liable to annoyance in them. Like the cars, however, they are well patronized by the pickpockets.
The driver also acts as conductor. The fares are passed up to him through a hole in the roof in the rear of his seat. The check-string passes from the door through this hole, and rests under the driver’s foot. By pulling this string the passenger gives the signal to stop the stage, and in order to distinguish between this and a signal to receive the passenger’s fare, a small gong, worked by means of a spring, is fastened at the side of the hole. By striking this the passenger attracts the driver’s attention. A vigorous ringing of this gong by the driver is a signal for passengers to hand up their fares.
All the stage routes lie along Broadway below Twenty-third street. They begin at some of the various East River ferries, reach the great thoroughfare as directly as possible, and leave it to the right and left between Bleecker and Twenty-third streets, and pass thence to their destinations in the upper part of the city. The principal lines pass from Broadway into Madison, Fourth and Fifth avenues, and along their upper portions traverse the best quarter of the city. As the stages furnish the only conveyances on Broadway, they generally do well. The flow and ebb of the great tide down and up the island in the morning and evening crowd every vehicle, and during the remainder of the day, they manage by the exertions of the drivers to keep comfortably full.
The stage drivers constitute a distinct class in the metropolis, and though they lead a hard and laborious life, their lot, as a general thing, is much better than that of the car drivers. They suffer much from exposure to the weather. In the summer they frequently fall victims to sunstroke, and in the bitter winter weather they are sometimes terribly frozen before reaching the end of their route, as they cannot leave their boxes. In the summer they protect themselves from the rays of the sun by means of huge umbrellas fastened to the roof of
the coach, and in the winter they encase themselves in a multitude of wraps and comforters, and present a rather ludicrous appearance. They are obliged to exercise considerable skill in driving along Broadway, for the dense throng in the street renders the occurrence of an accident always probable, and Jehu has a holy horror of falling into the hands of the police. Riding with one of them one day, I asked if he could tell me why it was that the policemen on duty on the street were never run over or injured in trying to clear the thoroughfare of its frequent “blocks” of vehicles?
“There’ll never be one of them hurt by a driver accustomed to the street, sir,” said he, dryly; “I’d rather run over the richest man in New York. Why, the police would fix you quick enough if you’d run a-foul of them. It would be a month or two on the Island, and that’s what none of us fancy.”
It requires more skill to carry a stage safely through Broadway than to drive a horse car, and consequently good stage-drivers are always in demand, and can command better wages and more privileges than the latter. They are allowed the greater part of Saturday, or some other day in the week, and as the stages are not run on Sunday, that day is a season of rest with them.
Like the street car conductors, they are given to the practice of “knocking down,” and it is said appropriate very much more of their employers’ money than the former. They defend the practice with a variety of arguments, and assert that it is really to their employers’ interests for them to keep back a part of the earnings of the day, since in order to cover up their peculations, they must exert themselves to pick up as many fares as possible. “It’s a fact, sir,” said one of them to the writer, “that them as makes the most for themselves, makes the biggest returns to the office.”
Many of the drivers are very communicative on the subjects of their profession, and not a few tell some good stories of “slouches,” “bums,” and “beats,” the names given to those gentlemen whose principal object in this world is to sponge upon poor humanity to as great an extent as the latter will
permit. One of the cheapest ways of “getting a ride” is to present a five or ten dollar bill; very few drivers carry so much money, as they hardly ever have that amount on their morning trips; the bill cannot be changed, and the owner of it gets “down town” free.
Apropos of this method, a talkative Jehu said to me one morning, “When I was a drivin’ on the Knickerbocker,” a line that ran some twenty years ago from South Ferry through Broadway, Bleecker, and Eighth avenue, to Twenty-third street, “there was a middle-aged man that used to ride reg’lar; all the fellows got to knowin’ him. Well, he’d get in and hand up a ten dollar note—you know the fare was only six cents then—and we never had so much ‘bout us, so, of course, he’d ride for nothin’; well, that fellow stuck me five mornin’s straight, and I sort o’ got tired of it; so on the six’ day I went to the office and says to the Boss, ‘There’s a man ridin’ free on this line. All the fellows knows him; he gives ‘em all a ten dollar note and they can’t break it. He’s rid with me these last five mornin’s, an’ I’m goin’ for him to-day, I want ten dollars in pennies, an’ six fares out. If he rides I’ll git square with him.’ So the Boss he gives me nine dollars and sixty-four cents all in pennies—you know they was all big ones then—an’ they weighed some, I tell you. When I got down to Fourteenth street he hailed me. Then the fares used to pay when they got out. So he hands up his note; I looked at it—it was on the “Dry Dock”—an’ I hands him down the pennies. Well, how he did blow about it an’ said how he wouldn’t take ‘em. Well, says I, then I’ll keep it all. Well, he was the maddest fellow you ever seen; he was hoppin’! But he got out an’ some one inside hollers out, ‘Put some one on the other side or you’ll capsize,’ an’ he thought it was me. He jumped on the sidewalk an’ he called me everything he could lay his tongue to, an’ I a la’ffin’ like blazes. Says he, ‘I’ll report you, you old thief,’ an’ I drove off. Well, I told the Boss, an’ he says, ‘Let him come, I’ll talk to him,’ but he never made no complaint there.”
Said another: “A lady got in with me one day an’ handed
up a fifty cent stamp. I put down forty cents. I don’t never look gen’rally, but this time I see a man take the change an’ put it in his pocket. Pretty soon a man rings the bell an’ says, ‘Where’s the lady’s change?’ Well, I thinks here’s a go, an’ I points to the man and says, ‘That there gentleman put it in his pocket.’ Well, that fellow looked like a sheet, an’ a thunder-cloud an’ all through the rainbow. He never said nothing but pulled out the change, gave it up, an’ then he got out an’ went ‘round a corner like mad. Some don’t wait like he did tho’, but gits out right off. One day a chap got out an’ another follered him, an they had it out on the street there, an’ we all was a looking on.”
Sometimes the drivers make “a haul” in a curious way. Said one: “A man handed me up a fifty dollar bill one night. I handed it back four times, and got mad because he wouldn’t give me a small bill. He said he hadn’t anything else, and I could take that or nothing, so, I gave him change for a dollar bill, and kept forty-nine dollars and ten cents for his fare. He didn’t say anything, and after a while he got out. Why, the other day a lady gave me a hundred dollar note, and when I told her I thought she’d faint. ‘My goodness!’ said she, ‘I didn’t know it was more than one.’ Such people ought to be beat; they’d be more careful when they lose a few thousand.”
“Some fellows,” said another driver, “give you ten or fifteen cents, an’ swear they give you a fifty cent stamp, an’ you have to give them change for fifty cents, or they’ll may be go to the office an’ make a fuss, an’ the bosses will sooner take their word than yours, an’ you’ll get sacked.”
One of the most laborious ways of “turning an honest penny” was brought to my notice by one of these knights of the whip. Said he: “Has you been a watchin’ of my business this morning? P’r’aps you aint took notice of the money I’m takin’ in? No, I guess not.” The latter remark was followed by a rough laugh, in which I thought there was distinguishable a little more than mere merriment, especially when I heard a mumbled imprecation. He continued aloud: “I aint seen any yet myself.” Soon the bell rang, and a ticket was passed up.
“Well,” said he, “he’s goin’ it strong, to be sure; this here’s the fourteenth ticket I’ve had on this trip.” An explanation being solicited, the fact was revealed that there was a man inside who made a practice of buying twelve tickets for a dollar, then seating himself near the bell, he would take the fares of every one and give the driver a ticket for each, that is, receive ten cents and give the driver the equivalent of eight and one-third cents, thereby making ten cents on every six passengers. “You see,” said the driver, “what a blessin’ those sort of fellers is. Here I don’t have no trouble whatsomever; he makes all the change for me, and ‘spose my box should blow over, nothen’s lost.” From time to time as the tickets were handed up he would cheer the toiler inside with such expressions as “Go it boots,” “How’s the cash?” “How does the old thing work?” always loud enough to attract the attention of the “insides.”
This strange individual interested me so much that I made some inquiries about him, at first supposing him to be crazy or otherwise terribly afflicted; but he is considered sound, is the third in a well-to-do firm, and is far beyond the need of having recourse to any such means for increasing his capital.