Skiddoo! | Page 9

be an End-Seat Hog.
Last Monday I jumped on an open-face car and it seemed that all the
world was filled with joy and good wishes.
I was smoking one of those Bad Boy cigars. I call it a Bad Boy cigar
because as soon as it goes out it gets awful noisy.

It was away uptown and the car was empty with the exception of a
couple of benches.
Two blocks further on the car stopped and a stout lady looked over the
situation.
I think she must have been color blind, because she didn't see the empty
seats ahead and decided to cast her lot with me.
It was a terrific moment.
"Peter," I said to myself, "don't be a Hog--move over!"
And virtue was triumphant.
I moved over, and the stout lady settled squashfully into the end seat.
Her displacement was about fifteen cents' worth of bench.
After we had gone about ten blocks more every seat in the car in front
and behind us was crowded, but nobody could get in our section
because the fat lady held them at bay like Horatius held the bridge in
the brave days of old.
People would rush up to the car when it stopped, glance carelessly fore
and aft until their eyes rested on the vacant seats in our direction, and
then they would see the stout lady sitting there, as graceful as the
sunken ships which used to block the harbor at Port Arthur.
The people would look at the stout lady with no hope in their eyes, and
then, with a sigh, they would retire and wait for the next car.
No one was brave enough to climb the mountain which grew up
between them and the promised land.
After a while I began to get a toothache in my conscience.
"Peter," I said to myself in a hoarse whisper, "perhaps after all you were
the Hog because you moved over! After the lady had climbed over you

she would have kept on to the other end of the bench where now there
is nothing but a sullen space."
I began to insult myself.
"Peter," I exclaimed inwardly, "what do you know about the etiquette
of the street car? According to the newspapers it is only a Man who can
be a Hog on the street cars, and since you are the original cause of
blockading the port when you moved over, you must be the Hog!"
Then I got so mad at myself that I refused to talk to myself any further.
The next day I was riding downtown on the end seat with my mind
made up to stay there and keep the harbor open for commerce.
"Never," I said to myself, "never will anyone become a human
Merrimac to bottle up the seating capacity of this particular bench
while the blood flows through these veins and the flag of freedom
waves above me."
At the next corner a very thin little gentleman squeezed by me with a
look of reproach on his face the like of which I hope never to see again,
but I was Charles J. Glue and firm in the end seat.
Then a couple of Italy's sunny sons by the names of Microbeini and
Germicide crawled over me and kicked their initials on my knee-cap
and then sat down to enjoy a smoke of domestic rope which fell across
my nostrils and remained there in bitterness.
After I had been stepped on, sat on, clawed at and scowled at for
twenty minutes, I began to discuss myself to myself.
"Peter," I whispered, "do you really think that the general public
appreciates your efforts to keep the Harbor open?"
And then myself replied to myself with a sigh of exhaustion, "I don't
think!"
"Peter," I said to myself, "no matter what your motives may be the

other fellow will always believe you are trying to get the best of it. If
you move over and give the end seat to another gentleman he will
consider it only what is his right. If you don't move over he will think
you are a Hog for keeping that which is as much yours as his."
I began to grow confidential with myself.
"Civilization is a fine idea, but Human Nature can give it cards and
spades and then beat it out!" I told myself. "The Human Hog was
invented long before the open-face street car began to stop for him, and
there isn't anybody living who should stop to throw stones at him,
because selfishness is like the measles, it breaks out in unexpected
places. All of us may not be Hogs, but there is a moment in the life of
every man when he gets near enough to it to be called a Ham