of water in the streets, or several inches of snow or slush.

The motor is attached to the frame of the car-truck, and the power is transmitted to the axle of the car by means of gearing. In some electric locomotives that have been made the armature of the motor is wound on the axle itself, but for ordinary street cars it is found best to keep the motor separate from the axle, and to transmit the power by geared wheels.

THE TROLLEY-CAR.

The current reaches the motor under the car by means of the trolley-wheel and pole. The trolley-wheel is a solid copper wheel, deeply grooved, which is pressed upward against the bare copper wire stretched over the middle of the track; the long flexible pole which carries the trolley-wheel has a strong spring which tends to press it forward, and so keeps the wheel always firmly pressed against the wire however much the car may jump about in rough places. An insulated wire connected with the trolley-wheel is led down the pole and through the car to the switches and regulating boxes placed at either end of the car, just against the dash-board. No current can reach the motor without passing through the switch and regulating box under control of the motorman. With the switch the motorman can turn the current on or off completely, he can regulate the amount of current that reaches the motor so as to start gradually or go slowly in crowded places, or fast in quiet ones, and he can even reverse the motor and make the car go backwards, a thing that neither the driver of the horse-car nor the gripman of the cable-car can do.

Perhaps it is not quite clear how so many motors can work from a single line. As a rule electric railways are provided with but a single wire from which the motors obtain their supply of current, and this system has come to be called the single trolley system in distinction to the double trolley, or double wire system, which was tried in the early days but has been abandoned in all but one or two places. The single wire hung over the centre of the track carries the current out from the station where the dynamos are placed, and the rails and the earth carry it back to the dynamos after it has passed through the motors and has done its work. The trolley wire is kept constantly charged with electricity, which the dynamos at the power station pump into it, much as if they were pumping-engines forcing water into a long pipe. If any connection is made, by means of an electrical conductor, between the trolley-wire and the ground, the current will flow down into the ground. The only connections made with it are those made by the cars, and then the current has to pass through the motors and turn the wheels.

The trolley-wire has to be carefully put up so as to be just the right height, and exactly in the middle of the track. It must be properly insulated so as to prevent the escape of the current down the poles or along the suspension wires, so at every point where it is attached to a pole or a suspension wire it is hung from an insulator of some material that will not conduct electricity. Every here and there you will notice that heavy electric wires or cables are connected with the trolley-wires. These-wires are called "feeders"; they are run out from the dynamos at the power-house, and connect on to the trolley-wire to force fresh supplies of current into it. When an electric current travels along a wire it loses a certain amount of power by reason of the resistance or electrical friction of the wire itself, so in order to keep the supply of current up to the proper pitch required for working the motors at all points of the line, these "feeders" are run out from the power-house, and they literally feed the trolley-wire with the current that the cars are always demanding from it.

It is often said in the newspapers that the trolley-wire is very dangerous to human life. This is not really so. Nobody has ever been killed by a shock from a trolley-wire. The current used for electric railways, although great power is conveyed by it, has not the property of giving a fatal shock to the human system. There are just as great differences between the electric currents used for different purposes as there are between streams of water. Some streams have great volume, but very slow flow, others fly out of a half-inch nozzle with sufficient velocity to drill a hole through a man's body as cleanly as a rifle bullet. It is the same with an electric current. You may have a current capable of fusing bars of iron, yet you could not feel it pass through your body, and another kind of current that can be carried by a fine wire will give a shock strong enough to kill. Therefore, believe me, there is a great deal of nonsense written in the newspapers about the "deadly trolley."

Where the "deadliness" of the trolley certainly comes in is in the extreme handiness of the cars. The horse-car driver has hard work to get much speed out of his team; the gripman of the cable-car can go no faster than the cable will drag him; but the motorman of the trolley-car can with a twirl of his wrist send his heavy car bounding on like a thing of life. The temptation to "speed up" when it is so easily done is too much for human nature. This accounts for the many accidents that occur, though it is only fair to say that the fault is partly with the mothers who allow their little ones to play in streets where there are car tracks, for the victims of the trolley-cars seem to be nearly always young children.

A PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENT.

BY WALTER CLARKE NICHOLS.

A partnership once, as some historians state,
Was formed on the banks of the slow-flowing Nile
By a young Cheshire cat, an elephant straight
From the jungle, and, thirdly, an old crocodile.

"For surely," the elephant plausibly said,
"We can all of us turn in the forth-coming years,
When sad, to the crocodile, whom we've been led
To believe an exceptional expert in tears."

"Quite right," quoth the latter. "We cannot begin
Too early, and when we need mutual mirth
We can look to our pussie, whose broad Cheshire grin
Excels in duration all others on earth."

"And then, when we're travelling," chimed in the cat,
Who had been for some moments in solemn thought sunk,
"We can carry conveniently coat, shoes, and hat,
Since we'll always have with us the elephant's trunk."

Many boys and girls have seen the famous actor Joe Jefferson in his great play Rip Van Winkle, that delightful story of the Catskill fairies, and in it that weird scene where he partakes of the spirits that the elves give him, making him sleep for twenty years. Well, there is a good story told about Jefferson in that particular scene. Once being near some good fishing-grounds, he spent the day drawing in the gamy trout, and was thoroughly tired when the curtain rolled up for the evening performance. Things moved smoothly enough until he is supposed to fall asleep. Now that sleep in fiction lasts twenty years, but on the stage about two minutes. This time, however, the two minutes were lengthened out into ten, much to the amusement of the audience and provocation of the stage-manager. Jefferson had really fallen asleep, and his snores, it is said, were quite audible beyond the footlight. Several remarks were fired at him by