The woman referred to occupied a seat across and further down the car from us. She had a form that made the ordinary carpenter’s scaffolding look graceful and huggable, her jaw reminded one of a trip-hammer, her face was plotted to throw a nervous child into convulsions, and her voice!—her voice would make a busy boiler-factory seem restful and serene after a second of it. She had just had a slight controversy with the conductor, and that official—you know how shy and shrinking the ordinary street-car conductor is—had been reduced to quivering pulp in a trifle over a minute. He, one of the most explosive and overbearing of his kind, had joined issue with her confidently and gleefully, but when her strident voice once got to working full time, about two hundred and fifty words to the second, I calculated, analyzing his character, dissecting his reputation, tearing up his habits, unjointing his hopes, shredding his ambitions, and ruthlessly forecasting his future, it was pathetic to watch that strong man striving fruitlessly to stem the torrent, then yielding little by little, still struggling strenuously to get in a word, until at last he was swept out on to the back platform, a mangled and lacerated bundle of raw nerves, too broken-spirited to so much as curse a little fussy old gentleman who berated him for not stopping the car at his corner. I never saw the stiffening so thoroughly, quickly and completely taken out of a man in my life. Oh, it was pitiable!
“If I’d only married her!” murmured Tanquerly again.
“Are you crazy?” I demanded sharply.
Tanquerly shook his head slowly and painfully. “No,” he said, “not yet. But I’ll bet if I’d only married her I wouldn’t have been to that banquet last night and felt like this this morning.”
Nothing to Gain
FARMER MOSSBACKER—Are ye goin’ to send your son to college, Ezry?
Farmer Bentover—Hod-durn him—no! He’s a reg’lar rowdy now!