AN OCTOBER ABROAD 195 



do. Even the drivers of drays and carts and 

 trucks about the streets are not content with a plain, 

 matter-of-fact whip, as an English or American 

 laborer would be, but it must be a finely-modeled 

 stalk, with a long, tapering lash tipped with the best 

 silk snapper. Always the inevitable snapper. I 

 doubt if there is a whip in Paris without a snapper. 

 Here is where the fine art, the rhetoric of driving, 

 comes in. This converts a vulgar, prosy "gad" 

 into a delicate instrument, to be wielded with pride 

 and skill, and never to be literally applied to the 

 backs of the animals, but to be launched to the right 

 and left into the air with a professional flourish, and 

 a sharp, ringing report. Crack ! crack ! crack ! all 

 day long go these ten thousand whips, like the 

 boys' Fourth of July fusillade. It was invariably 

 the first sound I heard when I opened my eyes in 

 the morning, and generally the last one at night. 

 Occasionally some belated drayman would come hur- 

 rying along just as I was going to sleep, or some 

 early bird before I was fully awake in the morning, 

 and let off in rapid succession, in front of my hotel, 

 a volley from the tip of his lash that would make 

 the street echo again, and that might well have been 

 the envy of any ring-master that ever trod the tan- 

 bark. Now and then, during my ramblings, I 

 would suddenly hear some master- whip, perhaps 

 that of an old omnibus-driver, that would crack like 

 a rifle, and, as it passed along, all the lesser whips, 

 all the amateur snappers, would strike up with a 

 jealous and envious emulation, making every foot- 



