“Happy Days Are Here Again.”
But we have travelled the celeritous cycle and once again it is recognised that the pedestrian has rights pre-dating the time when the first motor-car got itself run down by a horse-and-cart. While not encouraged to pick doubles, quarrels or daisies in the centre of traffic he is now deemed, within the meaning of the Riot Act, to be a visible and indivisible part of the pandemonium. He is permitted, nay! encouraged, to cross from one side of, the street to the other in a manner that does not suggest that he is sickening for painter's palsey or kangaroo fever. Where once he hesitated on the curb
until little girls tied their skipping ropes to him and little boys tried to carve their initials on him, now, courteous men in the uniform of the Legion of Liftmen, beckon him across as though he were their rich uncle from Kalgoorlie. At one time the valiant ped., after waiting his opportunity until mushrooms sprouted out of his boots, would gather up his gallopers and brave the bitumen-bouncers, the gasolene-go-getters and the pedestrian-pouncers. He would plunge in, feet first, and keep going until he reached the other side, or the hospital, whichever his luck deemed desirable. He defied both the rule of the road and the role of the rude.
But now all that is changed. There are crossing places for him, as clearly defined as the jungle track to the old water-hole. There are uniformed street-day collectors (see above) to keep him on the straight and narrow path; there
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are safety zones in which he can regain his “sangfroid” and his umbrella.