d
leisurely along, side by side, through Madison Square, on Christmas
morning.

A certain subtle charm--let us call it a dignified aimlessness--hung
about them like an easy garment, labelling them as mild despisers of
ambitions, of goals, of destinations, of conventionalities.

The observer who passed from casual contemplation of their unkempt locks
to a closer scrutiny perceived, even in passing them, that their shoes
were not mates, while the distinct bagging at the knees of their
trousers was somewhat too high in one case, and too low in the other, to
encompass the knees within which were slowly, but surely, gaining tardy
secondary recognitions at points more or less remote from the first
impressions.

One pair was a trifle short in the legs, while the other--they of the
too-low knee-marks--were turned up an inch or two above the shoes: a
style which in itself may seem to savor of affectation, and yet, taken
with the wearer on this occasion, dispelled suspicion.

It seemed rather a cold day to sit on a bench in Madison Square, and yet
our two gentlemen, after making a casual tour of the walks, sat easily
down; and, indeed, though passers hurried by in heavy top-coats and
furs, it seemed quite natural that these gentlemen should be seated.

One or two others, differing more or less as individuals from our
friends, but evidently members of the same social caste, broadly
speaking, were also sitting in the square, apparently as oblivious to
the cold as they.

"The hardest thing to bear," the taller one, he of the short trousers,
was saying, as he dropped his shapely wrist over the iron arm of the
bench, "the hardest thing for the individual, under the present system,
is the arbitrariness of the assignments of life. The chief advantage of
the Bellamy scheme seems to me to be in its harmonious adjustments, so
to speak. Every man does professionally what he can best do. If you and
I had been reared under that system, now--"

"What, think you, would Bellamy the prophet have made of you, Humphrey?"

"Well, sir, his government would have taken pains to discover and
develop my tendency, my drift--"

"Ah, I see. I should judge that nature had endowed you with a fine bump
of drift, Humphrey. But has it not been rather well cared for? The
trouble with drifting is, so say the preachers, that it necessarily
carries one downstream."

"To the sea, the limitless, the boundless, the ultimatum--however, this
is irrelevant an