The aspiring bus-conductor now receives
tuition in all branches and parts of her future
work. She is taught the detailed history of
tickets and the geography of routes. She
learns the points of the route upon which she
will presently work until she knows their
whereabouts by heart. Her ability to stop
her bus at the proper places on a dark or foggy
night vies with that of the Early Victorian
housewife whose great boast was that " she
could lay her hands on the blue bag in the
dark." She is shown how to punch a ticket
in the correct way — and there is more skill
in punching a ticket properly than the casual
observer would ever be led to believe. She is
taken into a map room, where it is conveyed
to her that, quite contrary to any ideas she
previously held on the subject, the Crystal
Palace and Hampton Court do not by any
means lie in the same direction. Common sense
aids her in her lessons on the handling of coins
on a dark night; and she soon becomes expert
in detecting the difference between a farthing

ii6



" Fares, Please ! "

and a sixpenny bit, a two-shilling piece and a
penny, a French franc and a British shilling,
merely by rubbing the coins in the palm of her
hand. Films are shown for her benefit depict-
ing the way in which accidents do happen to
the worst regulated of buses, and how they
might often be avoided. Other pictures
describe in detail the faults of the bad bus-
conductor and the qualifications essential to the
good one, from which the pupil is left to draw
her own conclusions. Practical instruction is
given by a series of ' joy rides,' as the girl
herself terms them. She goes with some of her
colleagues for a ride along some forsaken route,
and then she has to submit to the ordeal of
standing all the joltings, shakings, and swerv-
ings which the average motor-bus is capable of
performing.
