Explore "The Bow Flume Cable-Car" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"See those things yonder? " He looked in the direction of the Market Street cable-cars which, moved without any visible agency, were conveying the good people of San Francisco to a picnic somewhere across the harbour. The stranger was not more than seven feet high. His face was burnished copper, his hands and beard were fiery red and his eyes a baleful blue. He had thrust his large frame into a suit of black clothes which made no pretensions toward fitting him, and his cheek was distended with plug-tobacco. "Those cars," he said, more to himself than to me, "run upon a concealed cable worked by machinery, and that's what broke our syndicate at Bow Flume. Concealed machinery, no -- concealed ropes. Don't you mix yourself with them. They are ontrustworthy. "[19]
"These cars work comfortably," I ventured. "They run over people now and then, but that doesn't matter."