ed plush ran around the sides. At
irregular intervals the bench was heaped with disorderly piles of
luggage.

Everybody was taciturn. No one felt reposeful enough to settle in any one
place for a length of time. What conversation there was, was conducted in
a subdued, frightened sort of whisper. Three young ladies, one of whom
was the Englishwoman of the reading-room, unwearyingly paced up and down
the full length of the saloon. Their faces were unnaturally pale.

"This is the eighteenth time I have made the round trip," suddenly
declared the clothing manufacturer, unsolicited.

"Do you suffer from seasickness?" somebody asked in reply.

"I scarcely set foot on the steamer when I turn into a corpse. That
happens each time. I don't come back to life until shortly before we
reach Hoboken or, at the other end, Bremerhaven or Cuxhaven."

Finally, after a long, apparently vain wait, something seemed to be
preparing in the bowels of the tender and at the wheel. The three ladies
embraced and kissed, and an abundance of tears were shed. The prettiest
one, the lady of the reading-room, remained on the tender; the others
returned to the pier.

Still the little boat refused to move. Finally, however, at nightfall,
amid pitch-black darkness, the hawsers were loosened from the iron rings
of the dock, a piercing whistle burst from the tender, and the screw
began to churn the water slowly, as if merely to test itself.

At the last moment three telegrams were handed to Frederick, one from his
old parents and his brother, who wished him a happy voyage, one from his
banker, and one from his attorney.

Though Frederick had left neither friend nor relative nor even an
acquaintance on the quay, yet, the instant he perceived the tender in
motion, a storm assailed him, whether a storm of woe, misery, despair, or
a storm of hope in endless happiness, he could not tell. All he felt was
that something burst convulsively from his breast and throat, and seethed
up, boiling hot, into his eyes.

The lives of unusual men from decade to decade, it seems, enter dangerous
crises, in which one of two things takes place; either the morbid matter
that has been accumulating is thrown off, or the organism succumbs to
it in actual material death, or in spiritual death. One of the most
important and, to the observer, most remarkable of these crises occurs
in the early thirties or forties, rarely before thirty; in fact, more
frequently not until thirt