"Conversation on the subway is impossible. The ingenious gentlemen who
constructed it started with the object of making it noisy. Not ordinarily
noisy, like a ton of coal falling on to a sheet of tin, but really noisy.
So they fashioned the pillars of thin steel, and the sleepers of thin
wood, and loosened all the bolts, and now a Subway train in motion
suggests a prolonged dynamite explosion blended with the voice of
some great cataract."
-- P. G. Wodehouse
Psmith, Journalist (1915)