Crowded Mass Transit Train — The Fat Man and The Spinster

1905

ON STRANGER'S LAP SPINSTER RODE IN CROWDED ELEVATED TRAIN

Situation Enjoyed by the Other Passengers, but Decidedly Distasteful to the Principals — Fat Man Finally Succumbs to Fate

The elevated train was chock full when the very stout man got on at Thirty-third street. There wasn't room between platform and platform for a famine victim; but the stout man, like all stout men, didn't see how he could make any difference. He stepped upon the platform buoyantly, mashing a messenger boy flat against the door and spreading a lemon-faced little spinster all over the window like jam or butter.

At Twenty-eighth street half a dozen people got out. Instantly there was a rush for seats and standing room left inside the car. But alas! when a fat man gets wedged in a doorway, who else can penetrate it? Again, like all fat men, the fat man was lucky, and, strange as it may appear, he managed to get one of the seats recently vacated.

When he had sat down the little spinster gathered herself together and found a foothold in front of him, and the others, with some new passengers just taken on, crowded in after her and packed themselves like sardines. They were squeezed so tight that the spinster reached for a strap to keep from being pushed over on the fat man's head and shoulders. But just as she made a grasp somebody else caught the only remaining strap. The bell rang sharply and the train started with a jerk. The little spinster lost her breath and balance, toppled for a moment on her toes and then sank struggling down upon the fat man's lap.

The fat man gasped and the spinster gave an awful cry of consternation and reached for the floor. But there was no floor! Every inch of space was covered by the feet of the determined passengers. The moment she sat down they had spread out over her space. Then she blushed. Some people looked her way and laughed, but nobody moved. She couldn't wedge her knees down from the altitude they had assumed at the first lurch.

She continued to struggle and strain to reach a strap, while the fat man sat helpless with that energetic mite of femininity going through the jiu jitsu exercises on his knees. At the next station more people got on and the fight of the lone spinster became more difficult and desperate.

Flesh and blood, even 300 pounds strong, could stand it no longer. Like a mountain rising and casting off the small cities on its surface, the ponderous one rose and pushed the sardine-like passengers out of his magic circle. The spinster slid off his knee like a drop of water off a duck.

"Madam," said the fat man, lifting his hat gravely, "will you do me the honor to take my seat?"

"Well, it's about time!" snapped the ruffled little spinster ungratefully. — New York Press.