shaking a small
chorus of screams out of the ladies.

When the boat was within a yard of the wharf, the jumping commenced; and
all the able-bodied men, most of the boys, and some of the ladies, were
off before the boat butted with tremendous force against the wharf,
shaking both wharf and boat to their foundations, and giving to the
people on both a parting jar, which they carried in their bones for the
rest of the day.

Once safely on the wharf, the scramble was continued in various
directions and for various objects. Marcus, Tiffles, and Patching
indulged in the eccentricity of not scrambling; and, when they reached
the Erie Railroad cars, they found every seat taken, some by two
persons, but many by one lady and a bandbox or carpet bag, which was
intended to signify to the inquiring eye that the lawful human occupant
of that half of the seat was absent, but might be expected to come in
and claim it at any moment.

The three companions understood this conventional imposture, and
politely claimed the spare half seats from the nearest ladies. The fair
occupants looked forbidding, and slowly removed their bandboxes,
baskets, and other parcels, to the floor beneath, or the rack overhead;
and the disturbers of their peace and comfort ruthlessly took the
vacated seats, with a bow, signifying "Thank you."

The seats thus procured were some distance apart; and so the three
companions were precluded from conversing with each other. This suited
the taciturn mood of each that morning. As for the ladies who filled the
other half of the three seats, they might as well have been lay figures
from a Broadway drygoods store; conversation with them being prohibited
by the etiquette of railway travelling. A man may journey two hundred
and fifty miles in a car, with his elbow unavoidably jogging a lady's
all the way, and still be as far from her acquaintance (unless she is
graciously inclined to say something first) as if the pair were leagues
apart. This is proper, but peculiar.

The strange sadness that possessed Marcus that morning was intensified
as the ears rolled on. There is something in the monotonous vibration of
the train, and the recurring click of the wheels against the end of the
rails, that provokes melancholy. Marcus looked out of the window at the
flying landscape, and the distant patches of wood which seemed to be
slowly revolving about each other, and was profoundly wretched. He was
totally unconscious of the sha