then the flag of some
many-piazzaed hotel. The sunlight is the glory of it all; it must have
quite another attraction--that of melancholy--under a gray sky and with
a lead-colored water foreground.

There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention from the
study of physical geography. All the fashionable travelers had gone on
the previous boat or were waiting for the next one. The passengers
were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and had the listless
provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler or two, and a few
gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed in their uncomfortable
Sunday clothes. If any accident should happen to the boat, it was
doubtful if there were persons on board who could draw up and pass the
proper resolutions of thanks to the officers. I heard one of these Irish
gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficient to repress the mountainous
protuberance of his shirt-bosom, enlightening an admiring friend as to
his idiosyncrasies. It appeared that he was that sort of a man that, if
a man wanted anything of him, he had only to speak for it "wunst;" and
that one of his peculiarities was an instant response of the deltoid
muscle to the brain, though he did not express it in that language. He
went on to explain to his auditor that he was so constituted physically
that whenever he saw a fight, no matter whose property it was, he lost
all control of himself. This sort of confidence poured out to a single
friend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcited
tone, was evidence of the man's simplicity and sincerity. The very act
of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man's heart, so that he
will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, his diseases, his table
preferences, his disappointments in love or in politics, and his most
secret hopes. One sees everywhere this beautiful human trait, this
craving for sympathy. There was the old lady, in the antique bonnet and
plain cotton gloves, who got aboard the express train at a way-station
on the Connecticut River Road. She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak's
Four Corners. It seemed that the train did not usually stop there, but
it appeared afterwards that the obliging conductor had told her to get
aboard and he would let her off at Peak's. When she stepped into the
car, in a flustered condition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to
ask all the passengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if
it stoppe