all heard of the electric light on the water, and they want
to see it. But you take faces now! The astonishing thing to me is not
what a face tells, but what it don't tell. When you think of what a
man is, or a woman is, and what most of 'em have been through before
they get to be thirty, it seems as if their experience would burn right
through. But it don't. I like to watch the couples, and try to make
out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, or better
be. But half the time I can't make any sort of guess. Of course,
where they're young and kittenish, you can tell; but where they're
anyways on, you can't. Heigh?"

"Yes, I think you're right," said Corey, not perfectly reconciled to
philosophy in the place of business, but accepting it as he must.

"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't suppose it was meant we should know
what was in each other's minds. It would take a man out of his own
hands. As long as he's in his own hands, there's some hopes of his
doing something with himself; but if a fellow has been found out--even
if he hasn't been found out to be so very bad--it's pretty much all up
with him. No, sir. I don't want to know people through and through."

The greater part of the crowd on board--and, of course, the boat was
crowded--looked as if they might not only be easily but safely known.
There was little style and no distinction among them; they were people
who were going down to the beach for the fun or the relief of it, and
were able to afford it. In face they were commonplace, with nothing
but the American poetry of vivid purpose to light them up, where they
did not wholly lack fire. But they were nearly all shrewd and
friendly-looking, with an apparent readiness for the humorous intimacy
native to us all. The women were dandified in dress, according to
their means and taste, and the men differed from each other in degrees
of indifference to it. To a straw-hatted population, such as ours is
in summer, no sort of personal dignity is possible. We have not even
the power over observers which comes from the fantasticality of an
Englishman when he discards the conventional dress. In our straw hats
and our serge or flannel sacks we are no more imposing than a crowd of
boys.

"Some day," said Lapham, rising as the boat drew near the wharf of the
final landing, "there's going to be an awful accident on these boats.
Just look at that jam."

He meant the people thickly packed on