SARDINE-CAR. A term of endearment given to crowded street cars.
Marcus Aurelius thus describes the sardine-car in his "Meditations"--see page 946--as follows:
The sardine-cars consist of fifty people trying to squeeze into a space that was built only for a Pajama hat and two newspapers.
The seats in the sardine-cars run sideways; the passengers run edgeways, and the life insurance agents run any old way when they see these cars coming.
The sardine-car is the best genteel imitation of a rough-house that has ever been invented.
The are called "Sardine Cars" because the conductor has to let the passengers out with a can-opener.
Brave and strong men climb into a street car and they are full of health and life and vigor, but a few blocks up the road they fall out backwards and inquire feebly for a sanitarium.
To ride on the street cars in a big city of an evening brings out all that is in a man, including a lot of loud words he didn't know he had.
The last census shows us that the street cars in the city of New York have more ways of producing nervous prostration and palpitation of the brain to the square inch than the combined population of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Tinkersdam and Gotterdammerung.
To get in some of the street cars about six o'clock is a problem, and to get out again is an assassination.
One evening I rode from Forty-second Street to Fifty-ninth without once touching the floor with my feet.
Part of the time I used the outposts of a stout gentleman to come between me and the ground, and during the rest of the occasion I hung on to a strap and swung out wild and free, like the Japanese flag on a windy day.
Some of our street cars lead a double life, because they are used all winter to act the part of a refrigerator.
It is a cold day when we cannot find it colder in the street cars.
In Germany we find Germans in the cars, but in America we find germs.
That is because this country is young and impulsive.
The germs in the street cars are extremely sociable and will often follow a stranger all the way home.
Often while riding in the street cars I have felt a germ rubbing against my ankle like a kitten, but being a gentleman, I did not reach down and kick it away because the law says we must not be disrespectful to the dumb brutes of the field.
Many of our street cars are made out of the same idea as a can of condensed milk.
The only difference is that the street cars have a sour taste like a lemon squeezer.
When you get out you cannot get in and when you get in you cannot get out because you hate to disturb the strange gentleman that is using your knee to lean over.
Between the seats there is a space of two feet, but in that space you will always find four feet and their owners, unless one of them happens to have a wooden leg. Under ordinary circumstances four into two won't go, but the sardine-cars defy the laws of gravitation.
A sardine-car conductor can put twenty-six into nine and still have four to carry.
The idea of expansion which is now used by our Congress was suggested by one of these sardine-cars.
The ladies of America have started a rebellion against the sardine-cars, but every time they start it the conductor pulls the bell and leaves the rebellious standing on the corner.
We are a very nervous and careless people in America. To prove how careless we are I will cite the fact that Manhattan Island is called after a cocktail.
This nervousness is our undoing because we are always in such a hurry to get somewhere that we would rather take the first car and get squeezed into breathlessness than wait for the next which would likely squeeze us into insensibility.
Breathlessness can be cured, but insensibility is dangerous without an alarm clock.
For a man with a small dining-room the sardine-car has its advantages, but when a stout man rides in them he finds himself supporting a lot of strangers he never met before.
One morning I jumped on one of those sardine-cars feeling just like a two-year-old, full of health and happiness.
During the first seven blocks three men fresh from a distillery grew up in front of me and removed the scenery.
One of them had to get out in a hurry so he kicked me on the shins to show how sorry he was to leave me.
One of the other two must have been in the distillery a long time because pretty soon he neglected to use his memory and sat down in my lap.
When I remonstrated with him he replied that this is a free country and if he wished to sit down I had no business to stop him.
Then his friend pulled us apart and I resumed the use of my lap.
During the next twenty blocks I had one of the worst daylight nightmares I ever rode behind.
The party which had been studying the exhibits in the distillery got the idea in his head that my foot was the loud pedal on a piano and he started to play the overture from William Tell until I yelled "W'at'ell!"
That man was such a hard drinker that he gave me the gout just from standing on my feet.
Then I jumped off and swore off and swore at and walked home.
If the man who invented the idea of standing up between the seats in a sardine-car is alive he should have a monument.
My idea would be to catch him alive and place the monument on him and have the conductor come around every ten minutes for his fare.
Then the punishment would have a fit like the crime.