From the Cabby's Seat by O Henry

Books of Bedtime by Calming Anxiety from the Cabby's Seat by O Henry.

The Cabby has his point of view. He is more single-minded perhaps than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high swaying seat of his handsome, he looks upon his fellow men as nomadic particles of no account except when possessed of my greater desires. He is Jehuu and you are the Goodson Transit.

Be you President or Vagabond to Cabby you are only a fair. He takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your vertebrae and sets you down. When the time of a payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal rates you come to know what contempt is. If you find that you have left your pocketbook behind you are made to realise the mindless of Dante's imagination.

It is not an extravagant theory that the Cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life. There are results of the handsome's peculiar construction. The cock of the roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unshairable seat holding your fate between two songs of inconsistent leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin.

You sit like a rat in a trap, you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land. And must squeak upward through a slit in your parapetetic sarcophagus to make the feeble wishes known. Then in a cab you are not even an occupant. You are contents.

You are a cargo at sea and the cherubs that sits up aloft has Davy Jones' street and numbers by heart. One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement house next door but one to Mr McGarry's family cafe. The sounds seemed to emanate from the apartments of the Walsh family. The sidewalk was obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbours who opened a lane from time to time for a hurrying messenger bearing from Mr McGarry's good pertinent to festivity and diversion.

The sidewalk contingent was engaged in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to eliminate the news that Norra Walsh had been married. In the fullness of time there was an eruption of the merry-makers to the sidewalk. The uninvited guests enveloped and permeated them and upon the night air rose joyous cries. Congratulations laughter and unclassified noises born of McGarry's obligations to the Hemenul scene. Close to the curb stood Gerry O'Donovan's cab, Nighthawk was Gerry called, but no more lustrous or cleaner handsome than his ever closed its doors upon point lace and November violets.

And Gerry's horse. I am within bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats until one of those ladies who leaped their dishes unwashed at home and goes about having express men arrested would have smiled, yes smiled, to have seen him. Among the shifting, Sonora's pulsing crowd glimpses could be of had of Gerry's high hat battered by the winds and rains of many years of his nose like a carrot battered by the frolicem athletic progeny of millionaires and by consummacious fares of his brass button green coat admired in the vicinity of McGarry's. It was plain that Gerry had asserted the functions of his cab and was carrying a load indeed.

The figure may have been extended and he be likened to a breadwagon if we admit the testimony of a youthful spectator who was heard to remark, "Gerry has got a bun."

From somewhere among the throng in the street or else out of the thin stream of pedestrian, a young woman tripped and stood by the cab. The professional hawk's eye of Gerry caught the movement. He made a lurch for the cab, overturning three or four onlookers and himself. He caught the cab of a water plug and kept his feet.

Like a sailor shinning up the rattlings during a squall, Gerry mounted to his professional seat. Once he was there, McGarry's liquids were buffled. He seesawed on the mizzenmask and his craft is safe as the steeple jag ricked to the flagpole of the skyscraper. "Step in, lady," said Gerry, gathering his lines.

The young woman stepped into the cab. The door shut with a bang. Gerry's whip cracked in the air and the crowd in the gutter scattered and the fine-handsome dashed away across town. When the outspray hawks had head to little, his spur spurred of speed.

Gerry broke the lid of his cab and called down through the aperture in the voice of a cracked megaphone trying to please. Where now will we be driving to? Anywhere you please came up the answer, musical and contented. "It is driving for pleasure," she is, thought Gerry and then he suggested as a matter of course.

"Take a trip around the park, lady. It will be elegant, cool and fine. Just as you like, answer the fare pleasantly." The cab headed for the fifth avenue and sped up that perfect street.

Gerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGarry were disquieted and then sent the fumes to his head. He sang an ancient song of Killin's Nook and brandished his whip like a baton. Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to the right and then left at the lights of the houses.

Even in the shadowed handsome, her eyes shone like stars at twilight. When they reached 59th Street, Gerry's head was bobbing and his reins were slack, but his horse turned in through the park gate and began the old familiar nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned back in trance and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odours of grass and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast and the shafts, knowing his ground, struck into his by the hourgate and kept to the right of the road.

Habit also struggled successfully against Gerry's increasing toapar. He raised the hatch of his storm-tost vessel and made the inquiry that cabbys do make in the park. "Would you like to stop at the casino lady?" "Everybody stops."

"I think that would be nice," said the fare. They rained up with a plunge at the casino entrance. The door caps flew open. The fare stepped directly upon the floor.

At once she was caught in a whed of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights and colors. The car was on one slipped a little square card into her hand of which was printed a number of 34. She looked around and saw her cab 20 yards away already lining up in its place, among the waiting mass of carriages, cabs and motorcars. And then a man who seemed to be all shirt front, danced before her.

Next she was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a jesameen vine. There seemed to be a worldless invitation to purchase. She consulted a collection of small coins in a thin purse and received from them the license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing at all.

The new colored, new shaped life in a very palisthen and enchanted world. At 50 tables, sat princess and queens clad in all the silks and gems of the world. And now, well now and then, one would look curiously at Jerry's fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind that is tempered by the word 'Fullard' and a plain face that wore a look of love of life that the queens envied.

Twice the long hands at the clock went round. Royalty's thinned from their alfresco thrones and buzzed or clattered away in their vehicles of state. The music retired into the cases of wooden bags of leather embass. Jerry's remuved cloths pointedly near the plain figure sitting almost alone.

Jerry's fare rose and held out her numbered card simply. "Is there anything coming on the ticket?" she asked. A waiter told it it was her cab back and that she should give it to the man at the entrance. The man took it and called the number. Only three Hanson stood in line.

The driver of the one of them went and routed out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the captain's bridge and stared his craft to the pier. His fare entered and the cab whirled into the cool fastness of the park along the shortest home-wood road. At the gate, a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized upon Jerry's perclouded mind.

One or two things occurred to him. He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his funographic voice like a lead plummet through the aperture. I want to see the four dollars before going any further on the trip. Have you got the doe?

Four dollars laughed the fare softly. Dear me know, I've only got a few pennies and a dime or two. Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter of hoof strangled, but could not round the sound of his profanity.

He shouted, choking and gurgling curses at the stary heavens. He cut viciously with his whip at passing vehicles. He scattered fierce and ever-changing oaths and implications along the streets so that a late truck driver, crawling home-wood, heard and was abashed. But he knew his recourse and made for it at a gallop.

At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up, he flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground. "Come on you," he said roughly. His fare came forth with the casino dreamy smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station.

A grey moustache sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the cabby were no strangers. Sergeant began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tone of complaint. "I've got a fear here that," Jerry paused, he drew a knotted red hand across his brow.

The fog set up by Mr. McGarry was beginning to clear away. A fair sergeant, he continued with a grin that I want to introduce to you. "It's my wife that I married at old man-watches this evening, and at devil of a time we've had, it is true. Take hands with the sergeant, Nora, and we'll be off to home."

Before stepping into the cab, Nora sound profoundly. "I had such a nice time, Jerry," she said.