he pays
for his surfeit; it is he who perpetuates the insolence of the clerk and
the reluctance of the waiters; it is he, in fact, who now comes out of
the saloon, with his womenkind, and takes chairs under the awning where
Basil and Isabel sit. Personally, he is not so bad; he is good-looking,
like all of us; he is better dressed than most of us; he behaves himself
quietly, if not easily; and no lord so loathes a scene. Next year he is
going to Europe, where he will not show to so much advantage as here;
but for the present it would be hard to say in what way he is vulgar,
and perhaps vulgarity is not so common a thing after all.

It was something besides the river that made the air so much more
sufferable than it had been. Over the city, since our friends had come
aboard the boat, a black cloud had gathered and now hung low upon
it, while the wind from the face of the water took the dust in the
neighboring streets, and frolicked it about the house-tops, and in the
faces of the arriving passengers, who, as the moment of departure drew
near, appeared in constantly increasing numbers and in greater variety,
with not only the trepidation of going upon them, but also with the
electrical excitement people feel before a tempest.

The breast of the black cloud was now zigzagged from moment to moment
by lightning, and claps of deafening thunder broke from it. At last the
long endurance of the day was spent, and out of its convulsion burst
floods of rain, again and again sweeping the promenade-deck where the
people sat, and driving them disconsolate into the saloon. The air was
darkened as by night, and with many regrets for the vanishing prospect,
mingled with a sense of relief from the heat, our friends felt the boat
tremble away from her moorings and set forth upon her trip.

"Ah! if we had only taken the day boat!" moaned Isabel. "Now, we shall
see nothing of the river landscape, and we shall never be able to put
ourselves down when we long for Europe, by declaring that the scenery of
the Hudson is much finer than that of the Rhine."

Yet they resolved, this indomitably good-natured couple, that they would
be just even to the elements, which had by no means been generous to
them; and they owned that if so noble a storm had celebrated their
departure upon some storied river from some more romantic port than New
York, they would have thought it an admirable thing. Even whilst they
contented themselves, the storm passed, an