cigars. I call it a Bad Boy cigar because as soon as it goes out it gets awful noisy.

   It was away uptown and the car was empty with the exception of a couple of benches.

   Two blocks further on the car stopped and a stout lady looked over the situation.

   I think she must have been color blind, because she didn't see the empty seats ahead and decided to cast her lot with me.

   It was a terrific moment.

   "Peter," I said to myself, "don't be a Hog—move over!"

   And virtue was triumphant.

   I moved over, and the stout lady settled squashfully into the end seat.

   Her displacement was about fifteen cents' worth of bench.

   After we had gone about ten blocks more every seat in the car in front and behind us was crowded, but nobody could get in our section because the fat lady held them at bay like Horatius held the bridge in the brave days of old.

   People would rush up to the car when it stopped, glance carelessly fore and aft until their eyes rested on the vacant seats in our direction, and then they would see the stout lady sitting there, as graceful as the sunken ships which used to block the harbor at Port Arthur.

   The people would look at the stout lady with no hope in their eyes, and then, with a sigh, they would retire and wait for the next car.

   No one was brave enough to climb the mountain which grew up between them and the promised land.

   After a while I began to get a toothache in my conscience.

   "Peter," I said to myself in a hoarse whisper, "perhaps after all

    you

   were the Hog because you moved over! After the lady had climbed over you she would have kept on to the other end of the bench where now there is nothing but a sullen space."

   I began to insult myself.

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