the captain's clothing was altered for
the worse; but the man himself remained unchanged--superior to all forms
of moral mildew, impervious to the action of social rust. He was as
courteous, as persuasive, as blandly dignified as ever. He carried his
head as high without a shirt-collar as ever he had carried it with one.
The threadbare black handkerchief round his neck was perfectly tied; his
rotten old shoes were neatly blacked; he might have compared chins, in
the matter of smooth shaving, with the highest church dignitary in York.
Time, change, and poverty had all attacked the captain together, and had
all failed alike to get him down on the ground. He paced the streets of
York, a man superior to clothes and circumstances--his vagabond varnish
as bright on him as ever.

Arrived at the bridge, Captain Wragge stopped and looked idly over the
parapet at the barges in the river. It was plainly evident that he had
no particular destination to reach and nothing whatever to do. While he
was still loitering, the clock of York Minster chimed the half-hour past
five. Cabs rattled by him over the bridge on their way to meet the train
from London, at twenty minutes to six. After a moment's hesitation,
the captain sauntered after the cabs. When it is one of a man's regular
habits to live upon his fellow-creatures, that man is always more or
less fond of haunting large railway stations. Captain Wragge gleaned the
human field, and on that unoccupied afternoon the York terminus was as
likely a corner to look about in as any other.

He reached the platform a few minutes after the train had arrived.
That entire incapability of devising administrative measures for the
management of large crowds, which is one of the characteristics of
Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than at
York. Three different lines of railway assemble three passenger mobs,
from morning to night, under one roof; and leave them to raise a
traveler's riot, with all the assistance which the bewildered servants
of the company can render to increase the confusion. The customary
disturbance was rising to its climax as Captain Wragge approached the
platform. Dozens of different people were trying to attain dozens of
different objects, in dozens of different directions, all starting
from the same common point and all equally deprived of the means of
information. A sudden parting of the crowd, near the second-class
carriages, attracted the cap