enough, and could not interest me a great deal, but I should have liked to
have a glimpse of the complex minds of those young men, and I should still
like to know something of the previous life that could have made their
behavior possible to them. They ought to make public the philosophic
methods by which they reached that pass of unshamable selfishness. The
information would be useful to a race which knows the sweetness of self-
indulgence, and would fain know the art of so drugging or besotting the
sensibilities that it shall no feel disgraced by any sort of meanness.
They might really have much to say for themselves; as, that the lady,
being conscious she could no longer keep her feet, had no right to crouch
at theirs, and put them to so severe a test; or that, having suffered her
to sink there, they fell no further in the ignorant public opinion by
suffering her to continue there.

But I doubt if that other young man could say anything for himself, who,
when a pale, trembling woman was about to drop into the vacant place at
his side, stretched his arm across it with, "This seat's engaged," till a
robust young fellow, his friend, appeared, and took it and kept it all the
way out from Boston. The commission of such a tragical wrong, involving a
violation of common usage as well as the infliction of a positive cruelty,
would embitter the life of an ordinary man, if any ordinary man were
capable of it; but let us trust that nature has provided fortitude of
every kind for the offender, and that he is not wrung by keener remorse
than most would feel for a petty larceny. I dare say he would be eager at
the first opportunity to rebuke the ingratitude of women who do not thank
their benefactors for giving them seats. It seems a little odd, by the
way, and perhaps it is through the peculiar blessing of Providence, that,
since men have determined by a savage egotism to teach the offending sex
manners, their own comfort should be in the infliction of the penalty, and
that it should be as much a pleasure as a duty to keep one's place.