on that the gentlemen of a certain group or connection might on
occasion be best described by the term I had used sought to destroy the
particular presumption that our visitor wouldn't, by his ordinary
measure, show himself for one of those. He didn't, to all appearance,
for I was afterwards disappointed at the lapse of lurid evidence: that
memory remained with me, as well as a considerable subsequent wonder at
my having leaped to so baseless a view. The truth was indeed that we had
too, in the most innocent way in the world, our sense of "dissipation"
as an abounding element in family histories; a sense fed quite directly
by our fondness for making our father--I can at any rate testify for the
urgency of my own appeal to him--tell us stories of the world of his
youth. He regaled us with no scandals, yet it somehow rarely failed to
come out that each contemporary on his younger scene, each hero of each
thrilling adventure, had, in spite of brilliant promise and romantic
charm, ended badly, as badly as possible. This became our gaping
generalisation--it gaped even under the moral that the anecdote was
always, and so familiarly, humanly and vividly, designed to convey:
everyone in the little old Albany of the Dutch houses and the steep
streets and the recurrent family names--Townsends, Clintons, Van
Rensselaers, Pruyns: I pick them up again at hazard, and all
uninvidiously, out of reverberations long since still--everyone without
exception had at last taken a turn as far as possible from edifying. And
what they had most in common, the hovering presences, the fitful
apparitions that, speaking for myself, so engaged my imagination, was
just the fine old Albany drama--in the light of which a ring of mystery
as to their lives (mainly carried on at the New York Hotel aforesaid)
surrounded them, and their charm, inveterate, as I believed, shone out
as through vaguely-apprehended storm-clouds. Their charm was in various
marks of which I shall have more to say--for as I breathe all this
hushed air again even the more broken things give out touching human
values and faint sweet scents of character, flushes of old beauty and
good-will.

The grim little generalisation remained, none the less, and I may speak
of it--since I speak of everything--as still standing: the striking
evidence that scarce aught but disaster _could_, in that so unformed and
unseasoned society, overtake young men who were in the least exposed.
Not to have been