ef, did they fall presently
into petty gossip, complaints about the table, criticisms of each
other's dress, small discontents with nearly everything? Not all of
them.

An excursion is always resented by the regular occupants of a summer
resort, who look down upon the excursionists, while they condescend
to be amused by them. It is perhaps only the common attitude of the
wholesale to the retail dealer, although it is undeniable that a person
seems temporarily to change his nature when he becomes part of an
excursion; whether it is from the elation at the purchase of a day
of gayety below the market price, or the escape from personal
responsibility under a conductor, or the love of being conspicuous as a
part of a sort of organization, the excursionist is not on his ordinary
behavior.

An excursion numbering several hundreds, gathered along the river
towns by the benevolent enterprise of railway officials, came up to the
mountain one day. The officials seemed to have run a drag-net through
factories, workshops, Sunday-schools, and churches, and scooped in
the weary workers at homes and in shops unaccustomed to a holiday. Our
friends formed a part of a group on the hotel piazza who watched the
straggling arrival of this band of pleasure. For by this time our
two friends had found a circle of acquaintances, with the facility of
watering-place life, which in its way represented certain phases of
American life as well as the excursion. A great many writers have sought
to classify and label and put into a paragraph a description of the
American girl. She is not to be disposed of by any such easy process.
Undoubtedly she has some common marks of nationality that distinguish
her from the English girl, but in variety she is practically infinite,
and likely to assume almost any form, and the characteristics of a dozen
nationalities. No one type represents her. What, indeed, would one say
of this little group on the hotel piazza, making its comments upon
the excursionists? Here is a young lady of, say, twenty-three years,
inclining already to stoutness, domestic, placid, with matron written on
every line of her unselfish face, capable of being, if necessity were, a
notable housekeeper, learned in preserves and jellies and cordials, sure
to have her closets in order, and a place for every remnant, piece of
twine, and all odds and ends. Not a person to read Browning with, but to
call on if one needed a nurse, or a good dinner, or