Trolley

“ Once, like a reassuring presence, a small black car ran down past the trolley, almost brushing my coat.
Twelve minutes of this, then before us were iron sheds and black and white genii—the men who had made the line and the men who worked the trolley. Inside the shed the puffing little engine of magic power. Then the 'man who makes' on the mountain hurried us off, through a forest of thin firs, on to a plain of rock and white sand, with not more than ten feet of view around. ”

“ Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. ”

“ How familiar is the construction of the Pacific railroad; of the telegraph lines across the continent and through the oceans; the record of steamers of ten thousand tons, five hundred knots a day; the miraculous telephone; the trolley, that is with us to stay and to conquer, introducing all the villages to the magic of rapid transit, promoting, with the incessant application of a new force, the American homogeneity of our vast and various population—blending them for one destiny. ”

“ It is a land of low hills, broken by frequent reaches of the sea, and it is most amusing, most amazing, to see how frankly the trolley-car takes and overcomes its difficulties. It scrambles up and down the little steeps like a cat, and whisks round a sharp and sudden curve with a feline screech, broadening into a loud caterwaul as it darts over the estuaries on its trestles. ”

“ There was a trolley—just such a thing as porters used at railway stations, but smaller—which was his own particular implement, his own to pack parcels on for delivery to such few customers as did not carry away their own purchases: and to acquire the dexterous management of this trolley was a pure joy. ”

“ But for the present the trolley's strength, like a woman's, is in her weakness. She sings along her delicate wires, overcoming every obstacle, legal, natural, mechanical, temporal, and practical, dodging every expense, and, best of all, gathers in the ready nickels of everybody and his wife, while her laborious sister, the railway, must pose and turn and make rebates and special rates and ransack the catalogue of inducements if haply she may capture the more infrequent quarters and halves and dollars. ”

“ Noisy, crowded trolley cars rumbled by, each bearing its patient load of working men and women, forced by necessity to make their daily pilgrimage in over-crowded cars, where they paid their hard-earned nickels for the privilege of hanging to a strap, or being knocked about like unresisting nine-pins as the cars jolted and bumped over weary blocks of city streets. ”

“ Now the trolley whisks you about, and frequently deserts the roads to get to the mills and pick up its passengers, the workmen. The trolley is by far the best guide to the Wonder of Work in the world. I had no idea what was at Bessemer—or rather on the way to it. I had been in the works, but as the car mounted the hill I saw the subject behind me, and at the next stop jumped off and drew it, and it is in this way my work has been done. It's all adventure—the adventure of hunting for the Wonder of Work, and the love of the hunt has carried me all over Europe and America. ”

“ At night our boulevard twinkles with lights like a fairyland. The view of across the way through the gardens, as they should be called, down the middle of the street, is enchanting. All aglow our spic-and-span trolley cars—all our trolley cars are spic-and-span—ride down the way like "floats" in a nocturnal parade. ”

“ In the morning to tumble out of your hotel into that same strange town in the clarity of early sunshine, to have this great street or that or that—Market or Geary or Powell—stretching forth as if longing to invite your explorations—here again is the fascination of travel. The big trolley cars come rolling up Market street in quick succession, and for an instant their appeal is strong. But over there is a car of another sort, running on narrow-gauge tracks and with the roar of an endless cable ever at work beneath the pavement. The little cars upon those narrow tracks interest you. ”

“ Another man pushing a full trolley squeezes past you, his body gleaming faintly white in the darkness, while steadily, without cessation, by the light of an electric lamp, the man on the front face goes on picking, picking, his body glistening as if it had been dipped in oil. ”

“ The future historian of American society will probably attribute enormous influence to the trolley car in linking urban community with urban community, in extending the radius of the modern city, in freeing urban workers from the demoralizing influences of the tenement, in offering the poorer classes comfortable homes in the surrounding country, and in extending general enlightenment by bringing about a closer human intercourse. Indeed, there is probably no single influence that has contributed so much to the pleasure and comfort of the masses as the trolley car. ”

“ Dodging the low trolley-wire which hung about five feet above the rails, we crawled across the coupling between two of the cars to the other side of the entry, and walked to the left, past the locomotive where the motorman was still sitting in his low seat, waiting to pull out his train of empty cars into the sudden darkness of the tunnel beyond. Then, for the first time, I learned that mines are echoless, and that sound—like light—is absorbed by the blotter-like walls of the tunnels. ”

“ He will be entirely reassured the instant the train comes to a stop and he descends at the clean, pleasant little station and, in cab or trolley car, enters the fine old Spanish metropolis, rich in creature comforts, dignity, history, and civic pride. ”

“ The rest of the fabrication was cut short and drowned out by the shriek of a trolley-car, grinding noisily round a curve of the track at that instant. 126 It was the five-o'clock car, and I had grown to watch for its shriek as fearfully as ever Cinderella listened for the stroke of twelve from the castle clock. For me there was never a garden party without its trolley-car back to the city—its hateful, five-o'clock car—its hurried, businesslike, hungry summons—while ice in tea glasses tinkled to the echo. ”

“ Of course, as Lorraine says, “Stopping, that's art; and what are we artists like, my dear, but those drivers of trolley-cars, in New York, who, by some divine instinct, recognize in the forest of pillars and posts the white-striped columns at which they may pull up? Yes, we're drivers of trolley-cars charged with electric force and prepared to go any distance from which the consideration of a probable smash ahead doesn't deter us.” ”

“ I understand they have a trolley line now,—just imagine the profanation of a trolley line in the ancient city of St. Francis!—but at the time of which I speak, the atmosphere of the Middle Ages still hung over the place unbroken.
"The city lay above the valley, white-walled and silent. I remember touching with my stick what appeared to be a streak of moonlight that had filtered through the branches of a tree, when a beautiful little serpent uncoiled himself and slipped away into the shadows. ”

“ Perhaps the most thrilling and exciting moment on my various travels was that spent on a trolley-car in Southern Mexico. Along those distant tracks barely two or three trains pass in a day, and hundreds, aye, thousands, of miles of railway have to be kept in repair. It is usual for the engineers to run along the line in a little open wagon, known as a trolley-car, which is worked by hand by four or six men, and covers the ground at a good pace. It can stop at any moment, and be lifted bodily off the line should a train require to pass. ”

“ At intervals side-galleries ran out from the main sap, unlit, dark, and forbidding—listening posts. After a hundred paces or so a trolley blocked the way. Behind it two men were working, my taciturn acquaintance and another. The latter was hacking at the virgin earth with a pick, the former was shovelling the clay into the trolley. Heavens, how these men worked! Their breath came fast and regular, they spoke not a word; one heard only the hack, hack, of the pick and the dull smack of the earth-clods as they fell into the trolley. ”

“ If they see a horse in anxiety at the approach of the car, they considerately stop, and let him get by with his driver in safety. By such means, with their frequent trips and low fares, and with the ease and comfort of their cars, they have conciliated public favor, and the trolley has drawn travel away from the steam railroad in such measure that it ran no trains last winter.
The trolley, in fact, is a fad of the summer folks this year; but what it will be another no one knows; it may be their hissing and by-word. In the mean time, as I have already suggested, they have other amusements. ”

“ Upon starting your engine, water-motor, or whatever motive-power you have, the car will run from one end of the track to the other. When it has reached the support of the trolley-line, it will stop long enough for the cord trolley to pass around the wooden wheel, and then run in the opposite direction until the other support is reached. It will thus be seen that the trolley hangs to the upper part of the cable, or trolley-line, in running one way, and to the lower part on the return run. ”

“ After a year of fervent opposition and protest, the whole community—whether of summer or of winter folks—now gladly accepts the trolley, and the grandest cottager and the lowliest hotel dweller meet in a grateful appreciation of its beauty and comfort.
Some pass a great part of every afternoon on the trolley, and one lady has achieved celebrity by spending four dollars a week in trolley-rides. ”

“ To most of the passengers on the trolley-car that day the trip was merely a necessary means to an end; to the old couple on the front seat it was something to be remembered and lived over all their lives. Even at the Junction the spell of unreality was so potent that the man forgot things so trivial as tickets, and marched into the car with head erect and eyes fixed straight ahead.
It was after Hezekiah had taken out the roll of bills--all ones--to pay the fares to the conductor that a young man in a tall hat sauntered down the aisle and dropped into the seat in front. ”

“ Possibly to the rail way-haters the advent of the trolley has come both as a revelation and an extinguisher! At any rate it has brought them the cheap transportation for which they worried, without the expense of building their own railway coaches, and so a revelation in solving their difficulties with unexpected rapidity. But has it also silenced them? They can not demand that Government seize the railways without seizing the tramways. ”

“ The trolley indeed has, in less space of time than that required to launch any other known improvement, practically captured the cheap transportation field. This newcomer, indeed, seems equipped with every opportunity that the railways have been coveting for fifty years, and to be getting for the asking everything for which the railways have to pay the heaviest. ”

“ The trolley in front and the Elevated railway behind helped out, too, besides the automobiles, and the newsboys and more or less babies that were trying to do their part. Some people would be lonesome without those things, I suppose. ”

“ Over the Finance Building a light wispy plume of steam hovers and detaches itself, gleaming in the moonshine like a floating swan's feather. The light catches the curves of the trolley rails like ribbons of silver. ”

“ The fare charged by the bus is either the same or in many cases a little higher than that by the trolley car, but the bus has the advantage in that it can travel over streets where the trolley is not allowed, can usually make better time, and can load and unload at the curb, thus avoiding danger from passing vehicles, a matter of no little importance to timid passengers. ”

“ The end of the century sees thousands of these electric roads in existence; a comparatively new industry involving over $100,000,000; a passenger traffic running into the billions of people; a prospect that the trolley will succeed the steam-car for all utilizable purposes within the gradually extending influence of cities and towns upon their rural surroundings.
In speaking of the passing of the horse-car and its substitution by the trolley, a distinguished writer has well said: “Humanity in an electric-car differs widely from that in the horse-car, propelled at the expense of animal life. ”

“ I never saw people standing in a train, except that once which I have already noted, when in a very crowded car in Wales, two women, decent elderly persons, got in and were suffered to remain on foot by the young men who had comfortable places; no one dreamed, apparently, of offering to give up his seat. But, on the other hand, a superior civilization is shown in what I may call the manual forbearance of the trolley and railway folk, who are so apt to nudge and punch you at home here, when they wish your attention. ”

“ There were instantly [77] shrieks, groans, and such horrible sounds that we waited for nothing more, but pushing our stakes into the ground, sent the trolley flying past the awful spot and down the next hill. How we didn't turn over and get killed down that incline I don't know—it was the one nearest home, you know, where one has to be so fearfully careful about putting on a brake as a rule. ”

“ When there is only one pair of wires, two trolley omnibuses may pass each other (whether going in the same or opposite directions) by the simple process of pulling down the trolley poles of one car and swinging them out of the way for a few seconds. ”