In the Street Car

       But in all the delight of shopping there is still a drawback, and that is the street-car and its discomforts and the discussion of her conduct there. She knows that it is said of her that it is she who swings her parasol at the car-driver, from the greatest allowable distance, and walks with more or less deliberation toward the car while it waits, where a man would have run with good speed; that she holds the car, the door open, while she gives her friend the last message or the superfluous kiss and takes her parcels, and drops them, and has to pick them up on the steps; that it is she who refuses to budge an inch to make room for the new arrival; that it is she who slips into the vacated seat without a word of thanks.

       All these things, it cannot be denied, are offenses; yet, if we look into them, we may find some little excuse for their existence. "It must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." On our first glance, for instance, at the woman who swings her parasol a square off, and walks deliberately to the car, we see no apology ; but she sees one perfectly in the fact that every man in the car will make her a subject of merriment and of unpleasant remark if she runs, that her clothes make it very difficult for her to run, and that the laws of deportment, which have had to receive the stamp of masculine approbation in all ages before they could pass current, make it one of the high misdemeanors for a woman to be seen running. For another count in the indictment there is really nothing to be said. The woman who keeps the car waiting for her kisses and good-bys and mutinous parcels is a child who should be taken by the shoulders and pushed in. Nor can much defense be made for the woman who refuses to budge, since that is an unkindness, a churlishness, in which she is untrue to her sex; yet the truth is that, having- paid for her seat, she has a right to enjoy it without relinquishing a third of it on either side only to have her apparel ruined by the heavy weight crushed upon it, and frequently not merely a heavy weight, but a soiled and contaminating one. For the last accusation, and the one more dwelt upon than any, it is, without doubt, occasionally true that women take a proffered seat and neglect to express their obligation. Yet here again it may be said in their behalf, in the first place, that they would almost invariably rather stand than force another person to do so, and generally take the seat only to avoid a scene and the appearance of anything conspicuously ungracious. In the next place, the confusion and embarrassment incident probably divert the mind from the conventionality for a conventionality it is, when the giver in his own mind knows that, of course, the taker can not help but thank him, whether she says so or not. Again, it is not easy to thank a person who perhaps vacates his seat without a word or a nod, and whose back is too quickly turned for him to receive them if there are thanks to give; and one is in as unpleasant a position when sending thanks at a man's back as in not rendering them at all. And finally, to say nothing of the fact that a woman's fare is as good as a man's fare, and entitles her to a seat, or of the circumstance that it is an affair of noblesse oblige with the stronger party to care for the weaker, and the man thus does it as something due to himself, and not at all in order to please the individual woman, and therefore does not make her his debtor, yet so long as men refuse to women their obvious equality in human rights, she does not so much wrong, after all, as we implied in the beginning, in claiming privilege; and since all that she might be and do and rise to is taken from her in exchange for protection, a seat is her privilege, for which she owes no more thanks than a convict does for fetters. Nevertheless, we think no woman of any self-respect ever fails in giving thanks when the opportunity is allowed her.

       In the mean time the men who stare the women out of countenance; who put their arms unnecessarily about the women in helping them along their way; who soil the floor, according to their unclean custom, where the women must tread and drag their dresses, even if they do not exercise their skill in targetry on those dresses themselves such men (and there are, to say the least, as many of them as of the thankless women) should have very little to say about courtesy in the cars.