Every argument is in favor of substituting webbing for leather as material for car straps except the small item of expense to the companies of making the change. The cost of disinfecting them from time to time would be trifling. The president of the Board of Health of New York City has, in fact, expressed his willingness to disinfect the straps free of charge to the companies, if they will bring the straps to the department’s disinfecting plant at such intervals as he shall designate.
Spitting in cars is properly prohibited because there is some danger of spreading tuberculosis by this means. And it is also a practice revolting to well-bred people. As a means of conveying the germs of a number of loathsome diseases, the present car straps are more dangerous than is spitting on the floor. And it is certainly revolting to a man or woman of ordinary habits of cleanliness to be obliged to hang on to a piece of leather which is so filthy that one would not touch it under any other circumstances.
His Profanitaciturnity
“DEACON Timothy Tush is a man of few words,” said the landlord of the Pruntytown tavern, “but he makes ’em count.
“Of course, it was aggravating enough to have caused ’most anybody to indulge in any kind of language that came to hand, and plenty of it—to have the hired man cut up such a dido. To be sure, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a hired man; but Deacon Timothy’s hired man went further than the law allows when he attempted to smoke out a hornet’s nest up in the barn loft, with a skillet of live coals and two spoonfuls of sulphur; after, of course, having driven up with an ox-cart of hay and clumb up into the loft and found the nest. Being a hired man, he couldn’t possibly act any other way.
“He did exactly what might have been expected when a hornet stung him on the neck; he jumped backward, stuck his foot through a rotten board and flung the live coals in every direction. The Deacon was coming along with old Juckett, the horse doctor, just as the hired man tumbled out of the loft door, considerably afire and literally infested with hornets, and landed on the load of hay, setting fire to that, too. The oxen ran over the Deacon and old Juckett, scattered burning hay ’most everywhere, tore the cart to flinders, and would have burnt up the whole place if it hadn’t been for the neighbors.
“As it was, barn, cart and load of hay were totally destroyed, the oxen singed, the Deacon sadly battered, old Juckett’s left leg broken, and the hired man so unanimously stung and fried that the doctor said he really didn’t know where to begin on him. And—but, let’s see! Where was I? Oh, yes! All the Deacon said when it happened was ‘Suzz! suzz!’ but I can’t help thinking it was the most profane suzzing I ever had the pleasure of listening to.”