THE SUCCESSOR OF THE RAILWAY. 757 



"bert elevated railway, a panic seized the street railway companies. 

 They did not disappear in a night as the stages did, but they one 

 and all began building the small " bobtail" cars now happily, in 

 New York city at least, illegal which ran without a conductor, 

 the passenger on entering being exhorted by signs at every turn 

 to put his money in a box, first asking the driver to supply him 

 with change up to two dollars, if necessary, in an envelope, while 

 Providence took care of the horses. The Sixth Avenue line went 

 further and constructed a couple of enormous two-story cars, 

 which it ran up and down its Sixth Avenue line, to claim the air 

 above as well as the earth beneath, and so to make the Gilbert 

 elevated railway and its constructors trespassers. The present 

 writer remembers well the ridicule this move excited, and how a 

 daily illustrated newspaper (the only daily which in those days 

 dared to print a picture) published a picture of one of these huge 

 arks with the second story lettered in capitals, " Law offices of 

 , & ! " (being the then firm of attorneys which rep- 

 resented the Sixth Avenue Railway in its fight with the elevated 

 road, and was supposed to have advised the futile demonstration). 

 The laugh was still louder at the Sixth Avenue surface line, how- 

 ever, when it developed that the " Gilbert " elevated, from Carmine 

 Street to Central Park, called for a track elevation on Sixth Ave- 

 nue which actually cleared by a few feet the highest point of the 

 " double decker " or two-story cars which they had built to assert 

 their title a coelo ad or cum ! (a right which, while undoubtedly 

 inhering in the owner of a fee, may perhaps be questionable 

 as accompanying a street-car franchise, especially in a city where 

 the people and not the city own the streets) ! Well, the ele- 

 vated railways remained. Not only did they not decrease the 

 revenues of the surface roads, but the surface roads were obliged 

 to build more cars ! Human beings are queer freight ! And it 

 was about an equation of the long-distance passenger who rode 

 to the Battery, or the passenger on the lesser routes who in a day 

 or two grew tired of climbing stairways and took the surface 

 roads in preference ! The marvelous growth of the city did the 

 rest No doubt the Sixth Avenue surface road wished that it had 

 the million dollars it had spent in fighting the elevated railway 

 back in its pocket. And now, not only are there scores of surface 

 roads in New York city which feel no inconvenience from the 

 elevated railroads, but there is actually another stage li^e while 

 trolley lines are being projected without number to parallel the 

 surface roads, the elevated roads are projecting extensions and 

 there is at least one subway railway which is reaching out for 

 capital. But what would be a subway except another conduit 

 along which the trolley should string its local wires ? 



Nor will this adventurer, before which everything succumbs. 



