train bears me. I am particularly interested in the faces of those
who gather at the smaller stations to gaze at the passengers, get
the papers, and feel the rush, for a single moment, of the world's
great life. I love to listen to the smart remarks of some rustic wit in
shirt-sleeves, who, if the train should happen to be behind time,
intimates to the brakeman that the old horse didn't have his
allowance of oats that morning, or commiserates the loneliness of
the conductor of a train not crowded with passengers, all of which
is intended for the ears of a village girl who stands in the door
of the "Ladies' Room," with the tip of a parasol in her teeth, and
a hat on her head that was jaunty last year.

Riding into the country recently, I saw at one of these little
stations a pair of young men, leaning against the station-house.
They had evidently been waiting for the approach of the train, but
they did not stir from their positions. They were young men whose
life had been spent in severe and unremitting toil. Their hands
were large, and coarse, and brown; their faces and necks were
bronzed; their clothing was of the commonest material and pattern,
and was old and patched besides; and they had a hard look
generally. There was the usual bustle about them, but they did not
seem to mind it. At last, they started, and these are the words
that one of them spoke: "Come, Bob, let's go over and see if we
can't tuck away some of that grub." So both turned their backs
upon the train, and upon me; and as they went over to see if they
couldn't "tuck away some of that grub," I got a view of their
heavy shoulders, and their shambling, awkward gait. A pair of old
draft horses, going out in the morning to take their places in
front of their truck, would not move more stiffly than those
fellows moved.