beach, by an air of familiarity with the business of getting there, an
indifference to the prospect, and an indefinable touch of superiority.
These read their newspapers in quiet corners, or, if they were not of the
newspaper sex, made themselves comfortable in the cabins, and looked about
them at the other passengers with looks of lazy surprise, and just a hint
of scorn for their interest in the boat's departure. Our day's pleasurers
took it that the lady whose steady gaze had reduced them, when at lunch,
to such a low ebb of shabbiness, was a regular boarder, at the least, in
one of the beach hotels. A few other passengers were, like themselves,
mere idlers for a day, and were eager to see all that the boat or the
voyage offered of novelty. There were clerks and men who had book-keeping
written in a neat mercantile hand upon their faces, and who had evidently
been given that afternoon for a breathing-time; and there were strangers
who were going down to the beach for the sake of the charming view of the
harbor which the trip afforded. Here and there were people who were not to
be classed with any certainty,--as a pale young man, handsome in his
undesirable way, who looked like a steamboat pantry boy not yet risen to
be bar-tender, but rapidly rising, and who sat carefully balanced upon the
railing of the boat, chatting with two young girls, who heard his broad
sallies with continual snickers, and interchanged saucy comments with that
prompt up-and-coming manner which is so large a part of non-humorous
humor, as Mr. Lowell calls it, and now and then pulled and pushed each
other. It was a scene worth study, for in no other country could anything
so bad have been without being vastly worse; but here it was evident that
there was nothing worse than you saw; and, indeed, these persons formed a
sort of relief to the other passengers, who were nearly all monotonously
well-behaved. Amongst a few there seemed to be acquaintance, but the far
greater part were unknown to one another, and there were no words wasted
by any one. I believe the English traveller who has taxed our nation with
inquisitiveness for half a century is at last beginning to find out that