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North and south, to the sound of a jangling rattle, the trams on the Elevated are moving, and along the streets the trolly-cars, with their booming note, which crescendoes up the scale with increasing speed and diminuendoes with the slackening of it. Out on the water the red and green lights of the steamers move about in irregular tracks.
"In the stretch of railway between these two points," said he, "the country is dotted with ironworks and collieries. Of these, some are being worked and some have been abandoned. There are no fewer than twelve which have small-gauge lines which run trolly-cars down to the main line. These can, of course, be disregarded.
Neither of us had imagined the possibility of a town being so completely destroyed, for this was in 1907, not 1915, and twenty brief seconds had sufficed to wreck a prosperous city of 40,000 inhabitants. The streets had been partially cleared, but the telephone and the electric-light wires were all down, as were the overhead wires for the trolly-cars.
Across the river on the west side a row of lights are moving in one direction, and alongside them a row moving in the opposite, like ants at work. These are the trolly-cars crossing Brooklyn Bridge.
The stream of trolly-cars passes and re-passes, perpetually making short pauses for the passengers to nip in quickly or get left. Across from where I write is a restaurant with a legend above it, "Quick Lunch." This, I think, is rather peculiar to New York; in other cities it would be either "Good Lunch," or "Cheap Lunch;" here the attraction is that it is "quick."
Down far below was one of the busiest squares in New York; a double line of trolly-cars perpetually running through it that clanged their bells as they swung around the corner; automobiles that pinged their warning gongs and darted in and out amongst the stream of traffic fish-like; labouring horses struggling under heavy loads; the cars packed with people like cattle, standing up and hanging from the straps in the roof, toilers coming back from work; the sidewalks crowded with hurrying people.
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