The cable car isn't a car at all, children, but is a hilly-cum-go, a
species of rocking horse and a grown-up kiddie-kar. It is a native of
and peculiar to San Francisco, and is a loyal member of the N. S. G. W.
It has relatives in the South, and the electric dinkie that rolls up and
down between Venice and Santa Monica is its first cousin. Some say that
it is distantly related to the wheel chairs at Atlantic City. It is not
at all common.
The men who run it are its Uncles. The parents live underground caring
for the young kiddie-kars. At times, if you peek down in that hole near
the Fairmont and are careful not to be run over you may see them
bustling about. Before she was married, the mama was a Marjory Daw of
the Daw family, famous see-sawers. The children take after their mother.
The Uncles are very kind and pick the hilly-cum-goes up in their arms as
tenderly as a woman would. You must have seen them pick the little
things up and run with them across the streets out of the way of autos.
And at night they tuck them in their little beds and hear them say their
prayer which goes:
Oh, dear me, I hope I'm able,
All day long to keep my cable.
These hilly-cum-goes are not run by electricity at all, but just
pretend. They are run by three things - black magic, white magic and a
sense of humor. Black magic takes them up the hills, white magic
restrains them down, and the sense of humor is in the Irish conductors.
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