No harder lot could have fallen upon a horse than that which befell me. The night-work of cab horses is bad at the best, but mine was worse than the ordinary lot of these unfortunate creatures. I was driven by a man named Stevens—a coarse, fellow, who could not drive a yard without using the whip and supplementing his cruelty with bitter oaths.  
Then my work was in the night, when fallen man shows up at his worst. Oh! the sad scenes I have witnessed! the dreadful things I have heard! When the dark has fallen upon the earth, comes out boldly and walks under the stars as if there were no great Witness of its far above. Then man comes out of the dark and robs and , and does desperate deeds of violence to others who stagger homeward with drink. Then it is we hear the song, the bitter , the oath and curse and for help. Then it is that woman, lost to everything but a determination to live on through her shame, crawls 84about the streets, sinking lower and lower every moment of her life. Do the shameless and vicious think that night screens their evil deeds? Is it possible that they can think it less sinful to act under the starlight than under the broad beams of the midday sun; or is it that vice and cannot, dare not come out and face the pure golden light in the sky? Oh, man! have you forgotten that night was given to rest in, and not to riot away? Better be in your graves than out and doing the things I have seen you perform.
 
I shrink from any further record of this time—sad and cruel for me from the first, and sad and cruel still; but in the darkness, by the hour together in the chill fog, who could that this old body sank under it, and that I am broken in health? I am not so old a horse in actual years; but misfortune, neglect, and ill-usage have brought me to the end of my life long before my time.
 
Last night, while dragging a fare up Ludgate Hill, my head suddenly swam round, and I staggered and fell. When I came to, there was a small knot of night prowlers around me, and Stevens the driver was kicking my with his heavy boots. I got up somehow, and I staggered on, half-blind, and every bone in my body aching most terribly. The fare left the cab in

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