Their encounter with this metropolitan
facility for transportation turned out to be among the most memorable
bits of sightseeing of their trip. Neither of the girls had ever
imagined anything so lurid as the Saturday noon jam, the dense, packed
throngs waiting on the platforms and bursting out through the opened
doors like beans from a split bag, their places instantly taken by
an even greater crowd, perspiring, fighting grimly for foot-room and
expecting and receiving no other kind. Judith was fired contagiously
with the spirit about her, set her teeth, thrust out her elbows,
shoved, pushed, grunted, fought, all with a fresh zest in the
performance which gave her an immense advantage over the fatigued
city-dwellers, who assaulted their fellow-citizens with only a
preoccupied desire for an approach to a breathing space, and, that
attained, subsided into lurching, strap-hanging quiescence. Judith
secured with ease, on all the public vehicles they utilized that day,
a place on the outside edge of a platform, where she had fresh air
in abundance and could hang over the grating to watch with extreme
interest the intimate bits of tenement-house life which flashed
jerkily by.
But Sylvia, a shuddering chip on the torrent, always found herself
in the exact middle of the most crowded spot, feeling her body
horrifyingly pressed upon by various invisible ones behind her and
several only too visible ones in front, breathing down the back of
somebody's neck, often a dirty and sweaty one, with somebody breathing
hotly down the back of her own.
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