the time and the opportunity. And when one travels he sees what a
vast material there is for society and friendship, of which he can never
avail himself. Car-load after car-load of summer travel goes by one at
any railway-station, out of which he is sure he could choose a score of
life-long friends, if the conductor would introduce him. There are
faces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic kindness,--interesting
people, traveled people, entertaining people,--as you would say in
Boston, "nice people you would admire to know," whom you constantly meet
and pass without a sign of recognition, many of whom are no doubt your
long-lost brothers and sisters. You can see that they also have their
worlds and their interests, and they probably know a great many "nice"
people. The matter of personal liking and attachment is a good deal due
to the mere fortune of association. More fast friendships and pleasant
acquaintanceships are formed on the Atlantic steamships between those
who would have been only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one
would think possible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish as
he is indifferent to his personal appearance. The Atlantic is the only
power on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to her personal
appearance.

Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, the
glimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whom
his utmost efforts could give him no further information than her name.
Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on some mountain
lookout was all he ever had, and he did not even know certainly whether
she was the perfect beauty and the lovely character he thought her. He
said he would have known her, however, at a great distance; there was to
her form that command of which we hear so much and which turns out to be
nearly all command after the "ceremony;" or perhaps it was something in
the glance of her eye or the turn of her head, or very likely it was a
sweet inherited reserve or hauteur that captivated him, that filled
his days with the expectation of seeing her, and made him hasten to the
hotel-registers in the hope that her name was there recorded. Whatever
it was, she interested him as one of the people he would like to know;
and it piqued him that there was a life, rich in friendships, no doubt,
in tastes, in many noblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must be
absolutely nothing to him,--nothing but