Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/342

 drawn by two horses, and there were other lines in town, each with its cars painted a distinguishing color. There was one line that went out Collingwood Avenue, far to the very country itself; its cars bowled under noble trees and even past a stately mansion or two, or what in those days seemed stately mansions, and it was pleasant, it was even musical, to hear the tinkle of the bell on the horse's collar. Then there was still another line that ran down the broad Maumee River, almost to Maumee Bay and the "marsh" where the French habitants lived, and spoke delightfully like the people in Dr. Drummond's poems. On Saturday mornings my father was likely to send me on an errand to a superannuated clergyman who lived down there, and this involved a long, irritating journey. The journey occupied the whole morning, and spoiled a holiday. And then it was always cold, for, in the not too clear retrospect, I seem to have been sent on this particular errand only in winter, and the car was the coldest place in the world, especially when it got down where the winds from the icy lake could strike it. Its floor was strewn recklessly with yellow straw, in some ironical pretense of keeping the car warm, and I would sit there with feet slowly freezing in the rustling straw, and after I had inspected the two or three passengers, there was nothing to do but to read the notice over the fare-box in the front end of the car, until I had it quite by heart:

"The driver will furnish change to the amount of Two Dollars, returning the full amount, thus en