"Oh Mother, Mother!" exclaimed the son. "You do like to try new things, don't you? Here I drove Prince to the station just so that you wouldn't have to ride in one of these cars until you became used to seeing them slide along driven by what you call that dangerous fluid."
"Well, I'm going to ride once anyway. I've always tried all the different ways of getting about that I could. Why, I was the very first person from our town to ride in a street car in Boston. That was way back in 1856 in a little bobbing horse car drawn by two horses harnessed tandem. Lots of people then made fun of the little cars, I remember. They said the omnibus was better. They used to have races between car and omnibus sometimes to prove which was better. How the passengers on the one ahead would cheer! In the spring, when the snow was going off, the omnibus, which would still be on runners, would get stuck in the mud and the car would win; in the winter, if there was drifting snow, the car would get stuck and the omnibus would go gliding by with sleigh bells ringing and passengers waving their hands. Oh, it was quite exciting, but the omnibuses were not used a great while after the cars were introduced, as the cars were really more comfortable, more convenient, and could make better time."
Several times during the first day of her visit Grandma exclaimed, "I am thankful not to see any poor horses straining to draw those cars!"
Pity for the horses had always interfered with Grandma's enjoyment in riding on the horse cars. When she and Harriet had been on their accustomed rides, Harriet always had taken pains to tell when a third horse was added to the usual pair to help draw a car up a hill.
"Now he's on, Grandma," she would say when the car stopped at the foot of a hard hill and a boy brought up the horse which had been waiting there and hooked the heavy tugs to the whiffletree bar so that the third horse could run along beside the others, although just outside the rails. "It's a big horse," she would often add.
But even this had not satisfied Grandma. She had been in San Francisco when the cable cars were first put in use and she believed them the only car suitable for a hilly city.
"You ought to have the cable cars," she had said many a time. However, before she had watched the electric cars a half day Grandma went so far as to say, "If you could be sure there would be no danger from electricity and be sure of power enough I don't know why these wouldn't do just as well as the cable cars."
"Tell me about the cable cars, won't you, Grandma? What makes them go?" asked Harriet, now old enough to be interested in the difference between the systems.
"The cable makes them go," answered her grandmother. "It is an endless iron chain which the engine at the central station keeps running all the time. It travels between the rails in an open channel or groove just below ground. The car is carried along by being fastened to this cable. What is it you call the driver of your new cars—a motorman? The man who drives a cable car is called a gripman. It is his business to work the 'grip,' a stout iron contrivance which must catch hold of the cable when the car is to be carried along and must be loosened when the car is to be stopped."
"Is San Francisco the only city where they have those cars?" asked Harriet.