stations, carpet-bag in
hand; in women who came aboard, and were awkwardly shaken hands with or
sheepishly kissed by those who hastily got seats for them, and placed
their bags or their babies in their laps, and turned for a nod at the
door; in young ladies who were seen to places by young men the latter
seemed not to care if the train did go off with them, and then threw up
their windows and talked with girl-friends, on the platform without, till
the train began to move, and at last turned with gleaming eyes and moist
red lips, and panted hard in the excitement of thinking about it, and
could not calm themselves to the dull level of the travel around them; in
the conductor, coldly and inaccessibly vigilant, as he went his rounds,
reaching blindly for the tickets with one hand while he bent his head
from time, to time, and listened with a faint, sarcastic smile to the
questions of passengers who supposed they were going to get some
information out of him; in the trainboy, who passed through on his many
errands with prize candies, gum-drops, pop-corn, papers and magazines,
and distributed books and the police journals with a blind impartiality,
or a prodigious ignorance, or a supernatural perception of character in
those who received them.

A through train from East to West presents some peculiar features as well
as the traits common to all railway travel; and our friends decided that
this was not a very well-dressed company, and would contrast with the
people on an express-train between Boston and New York to no better
advantage than these would show beside the average passengers between
London and Paris. And it seems true that on a westering' line, the
blacking fades gradually from the boots, the hat softens and sinks, the
coat loses its rigor of cut, and the whole person lounges into increasing
informality of costume. I speak of the undressful sex alone: woman,
wherever she is, appears in the last attainable effects of fashion, which
are now all but telegraphic and universal. But most of the passengers
here were men, and they mere plainly of the free-and easy West rather
than the dapper East. They wore faces thoughtful with the problem of
buying cheap and selling dear, and they could be known by their silence
from the loquacious, acquaintance-making way-travellers. In these, the
mere coming aboard seemed to beget an aggressively confidential mood.
Perhaps they clutched recklessly at any means of relieving their ennui;