llers, leaping in thought with
the boys from the moving train, felt that they did so at the peril of
their lives. Then they were interested in people who went out and found
their friends waiting for them, or else did not find them, and wandered
disconsolately up and down before the country stations, carpet-bag in
hand; in women who came aboard, and were awkwardly shaken hands with or
sheepishly kissed by those who hastily got seats for them, and placed
their bags or their babies in their laps, and turned for a nod at the
door; in young ladies who were seen to places by young men the latter
seemed not to care if the train did go off with them, and then threw
up their windows and talked with girl-friends, on the platform without,
till the train began to move, and at last turned with gleaming eyes and
moist red lips, and panted hard in the excitement of thinking about it,
and could not calm themselves to the dull level of the travel around
them; in the conductor, coldly and inaccessibly vigilant, as he went his
rounds, reaching blindly for the tickets with one hand while he bent his
head from time, to time, and listened with a faint, sarcastic smile to
the questions of passengers who supposed they were going to get some
information out of him; in the trainboy, who passed through on his many
errands with prize candies, gum-drops, pop-corn, papers and magazines,
and distributed books and the police journals with a blind impartiality,
or a prodigious ignorance, or a supernatural perception of character in
those who received them.

A through train from East to West presents some peculiar features as
well as the traits common to all railway travel; and our friends decided
that this was not a very well-dressed company, and would contrast with
the people on an express-train between Boston and New York to no better
advantage than these would show beside the average passengers between
London and Paris. And it seems true that on a westering' line, the
blacking fades gradually from the boots, the hat softens and sinks,
the coat loses its rigor of cut, and the whole person lounges into
increasing informality of costume. I speak of the undressful sex alone:
woman, wherever she is, appears in the last attainable effects of
fashion, which are now all but telegraphic and universal. But most of
the passengers here were men, and they mere plainly of the free-and easy
West rather than the dapper East. They wore faces thoughtful with the
prob