been holding back by main force from the beginning, and which
now persists in precipitating itself in our peaceful page. It is a
question which merits wider and closer study than we can give it, and it
will, we hope, find an answer such as we cannot supply in the wisdom of
the reader. It presented itself to the mind of Eugenio in a recent
experience of his at a famous seaside resort which does not remit its
charm even in the heart of winter, and which with the first tremor of
the opening spring allures the dweller among the sky-scrapers and the
subways with an irresistible appeal. We need not further specify the
place, but it is necessary to add that it draws not only the jaded or
sated New-Yorker, but the more eager and animated average of well-to-do
people from every part of their country who have got bored out with
their happy homes and want a few days' or a few weeks' change. One may
not perhaps meet a single distinguished figure on its famous promenade,
or at least more distinguished than one's own; with the best will in the
world to find such figures, Eugenio could count but three or four: a
tall, alert, correct man or two; an electly fashioned, perfectly set-up,
dominant woman or so, whose bearing expressed the supremacy of a set in
some unquestionable world. But there was obvious riches aplenty, and
aplenty of the kind wholesomeness of the good, true, intelligent, and
heaven-bound virtue of what we must begin to call our middle class,
offensive as the necessity may be. Here and there the effect of
champagne in the hair, which deceived no one but the wearer, was to be
noted; here and there, high-rolling, a presence with the effect of
something more than champagne in the face loomed in the perspective
through the haze of a costly cigar. But by far, immensely far, the
greater number of his fellow-frequenters of the charming promenade were
simple, domestic, well-meaning Americans like Eugenio himself, of a
varying simplicity indeed, but always of a simplicity. They were the
stuff with which his fancy (he never presumed to call it his
imagination) had hitherto delighted to play, fondly shaping out of the
collective material those lineaments and expressions which he hoped
contained a composite likeness of his American day and generation. The
whole situation was most propitious, and yet he found himself moving
through it without one of the impulses which had been almost lifelong
with him. As if in some strange paralysis,