mations that
there was plenty of time, and that he would give them due warning before
the train started. Those who had flocked out of the cars, to prey with
beak and claw, as the vulture-like fashion is, upon everything in reach,
remained to eat like Christians; and even a poor, scantily-Englished
Frenchman, who wasted half his time in trying to ask how long the cars
stopped and in looking at his watch, made a good dinner in spite of
himself.

"O Basil, Basil!" cried Isabel, when the train was again in motion, "have
we really dined once more? It seems too good to be true. Cleanliness,
plenty, wholesomeness, civility! Yes, as you say, they cannot be civil
where they are not just; honesty and courtesy go together; and wherever
they give you outrageous things to eat, they add indigestible insults.
Basil, dear, don't be jealous; I shall never meet him again; but I'm in
love with that black waiter at our table. I never saw such perfect
manners, such a winning and affectionate politeness. He made me feel that
every mouthful I ate was a personal favor to him. What a complete
gentleman. There ought never to be a white waiter. None but negroes are
able to render their service a pleasure and distinction to you."

So they prattled on, doing, in their eagerness to be satisfied, a homage
perhaps beyond its desert to the good dinner and the decent service of
it. But here they erred in the right direction, and I find nothing more
admirable in their behavior throughout a wedding journey which certainly
had its trials, than their willingness to make the very heat of whatever
would suffer itself to be made anything at all of. They celebrated its
pleasures with magnanimous excess, they passed over its griefs with a
wise forbearance. That which they found the most difficult of management
was the want of incident for the most part of the time; and I who write
their history might also sink under it, but that I am supported by the
fact that it is so typical, in this respect. I even imagine that ideal
reader for whom one writes as yawning over these barren details with the
life-like weariness of an actual travelling companion of theirs. Their
own silence often sufficed my wedded lovers, or then, when there was
absolutely nothing to engage them, they fell back upon the story of their
love, which they were never tired of hearing as they severally knew it.
Let it not be a reproach to human nature or to me if I say that there was
something in the