The sleigh was
drawn by as fine a team of horses as I ever saw. (You needn't
think all the best animals are brought up nowadays; never was such
horseflesh as fifty years ago on Long Island, or south, or in New York
city; folks look'd for spirit and mettle in a nag, not tame speed
merely.) Well, I, a boy of perhaps 13 or 14, stopp'd and gazed long at
the spectacle of that fur-swathed old man, surrounded by friends and
servants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I remember
the spirited, champing horses, the driver with his whip, and a
fellow-driver by his side, for extra prudence. The old man, the
subject of so much attention, I can almost see now. It was John Jacob
Astor.
The years 1846, '47, and there along, see me still in New York City,
working as writer and printer, having my usual good health, and a good
time generally.
OMNIBUS JAUNTS AND DRIVERS
One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded--namely, the
Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers.
The vehicles still (I write this paragraph in 1881) give a portion
of the character of Broadway--the Fifth avenue, Madison avenue, and
Twenty-third street lines yet running. But the flush days of the
old Broadway stages, characteristic and copious, are over. The
Yellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broadway, the Fourth avenue,
the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or thirty years ago,
are all gone. And the men specially identified with them, and giving
vitality and meaning to them--the drivers--a strange, natural,
quick-eyed and wondrous race--(not only Rabelais and Cervantes would
have gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakspere would)--how well I
remember them, and must here give a word about them.
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