“Young man,” put in a gentleman behind me, who was also occupying a seat alone, “why don’t you give them the seat? You can sit by me.”
“Why don’t you?” I retorted. “You can sit by me.”
“I like to sit by the window,” he responded; “and am not well.”
“I, too, am partial to the window,” said I, “and have been at the point of death for a long time, with the toothache and a bad cold. I am quite an invalid.—Now, my friend,” I went on, addressing the gentleman with his lady, “why did you come to me, the first one, and ask me to move, when you see that I am a cripple? There are others in the car who occupy whole seats, and who could certainly move more easily than I. Were I the only one, I would willingly resign my seat, for the accommodation of the lady.”
“I think you shouldn’t ask him to move,” said a gentleman who sat with another on an opposite seat. “A man with but one leg ought to have some show in the world.”
This remark made the first gentleman a little ashamed of himself, and he turned and said to his lady:
“Come, let us try another car.”
They walked to the car-door, and not one offered to surrender his much-loved seat-by-the-window, to accommodate them. Man is naturally a selfish creature, and nowhere is his selfishness brought out in so strong a light as on a railroad car. Do not censure me, gentle public, for not relinquishing my seat. This was not the first or last time I was asked to abandon a comfortable seat in a car, after taking the trouble to go early and secure it. It seems that in such cases they always come right to me. I do not know why. It may be that I look young, innocent and verdant; and that they jump to the conclusion that I am one of those persons who, as the poet doesn’t say:
“Know not their rights;
And, knowing not, dare not maintain.”