alling, which
disenthrall it of servility, and constitute him your eager host, not
your menial, for the moment. From table to table passed a calming
influence in the person of the proprietor, who, as he took his richly
earned money, checked the rising fears of the guests by repeated
proclamations 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 of