Elevated Railways in New York [pp. 393-408]

APPLETONS' JOURNAL.
RAPID TRA NSIT IN NEW YORK.
NO one who has not lived in a large city with
long distances between the principal points,
and with no other means of communication than the
horse-cars, excepting private conveyances, can fully
appreciate what a boon has been secured by the
completion of the elevated railways in New York.
The active, sanguine, much-suffering inhabitant
omitting hanging by the thumbs, nor the greater infliction, devised (we believe) in Chicago, of hanging
from a rear platform by the eyebrows! When the
weather is warm the cars are suffocating, when it is
cold they are freezing, and in all seasons their capacity is overtaxed.
Supposing that Brown-the hypothetic citizen
PROPOSED BROADWAY ARCADE RAILWAY.
of our metropolis has dreamed of rapid transit for previously referred to, who is imaginary in personyears; he has read of various attractive but invari- ality but not in his grievances-lives in Harlem or
ably delusive schemes in his newspaper morning af- above Fortieth Street, and does business below
ter morning, and evening after evening he has had Canal Street-which is quite likely, as, in a general
no other resource than to ride from his office down- way, the commercial part of the city is down-town
town to his house up-town in an overcrowded, dila- and the dwelling part up-town. The time consumed
tory horse-car, with seats for less than one-half of in his homeward journey is from thirty to ninety
its passengers. But we need not expatiate on the minutes; the chances of his having a seat are very
miseries of this kind of locomotion, as they are slight, and, if he has one, his neighbors overflow his
probably familiar to most of our readers-they in- knees and thrust their elbows into his ribs, while his
clude pretty nearly all the tortures bequeathed to feet are trodden upon by the passengers who are
unfortunate man by mediaeval and later times, not standing and who lose their equipoise on every occa MAY, I878. VOL. IV.-26