Hat-boxes and light leather cases are sent bounding down like
footballs, gradually and by slow degrees forming the mountain.

What secrets in these chests! what tales associated with them! Bridal
trousseaux, jewels, letters, relics of those loved and gone; here the
stately paraphernalia of a family assumed to be rich and prosperous,
who in truth are in flight, hurrying away with their goods. Here,
again, the newly bought 'box' of the bride, with her initials gaudily
emblazoned; and the showy, glittering chests of the Americans.

There is a physiognomy in luggage, distinct as in clothes; and a
strange variety, not uninteresting. How significant, for instance, of
the owner is the weather-beaten, battered old portmanteau of the
travelling bachelor, embrowned with age, out of shape, yet still
strong and serviceable!--a business-like receptacle, which, like him,
has travelled thousands of miles, been rudely knocked about, weighed,
carried hither and thither, encrusted with the badges of hotels as an
old vessel is with barnacles, grim and reserved like its master, and
never lost or gone astray.

Now the engines and their trains glide away home. The shadowy figures
stand round in crowds. To the reflecting mind there is something
bewildering and even mournful in the survey of this huge agglomeration
and of its owners, the muffled, shadowy figures, some three hundred in
number, grouped together, and who will be dispersed again in a few
hours.

A yacht-voyage could not be more tranquilly delightful than this
pleasant moonlight transit. We are scarcely clear of the twinkling
lights of the Dover amphitheatre, grown more and more distant, when