no matter whose property it was, he lost all control of himself.  This sort of confidence poured out to a single friend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcited tone, was evidence of the man’s simplicity and sincerity.  The very act of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man’s heart, so that he will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, his diseases, his table preferences, his disappointments in love or in politics, and his most secret hopes.  One sees everywhere this beautiful human trait, this craving for sympathy.  There was the old lady, in the antique bonnet and plain cotton gloves, who got aboard the express train at a way-station on the Connecticut River Road.  She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak’s Four Corners.  It seemed that the train did not usually stop there, but it appeared afterwards that the obliging conductor had told her to get aboard and he would let her off at Peak’s.  When she stepped into the car, in a flustered condition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to ask all the passengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if it stopped at Peak’s.  The information she received was various, but the weight of it was discouraging, and some of the passengers urged her to get off without delay, before the train should start.  The poor woman got off, and pretty soon came back again, sent by the conductor; but her mind was not settled, for she repeated her questions to every person who passed her seat, and their answers still more discomposed her.  “Sit perfectly still,” said the conductor, when he came by.  “You must get out and wait for a way train,” said the passengers, who knew.  In this confusion, the train moved off, just as the old lady had about made up her mind to quit the car, when her distraction was completed by the discovery that her hair trunk was not on board.  She saw it standing on the open platform, as we passed, and after one look of terror, and a dash at the window, she subsided into her seat, grasping her bandbox, with a vacant look of utter despair.  Fate now seemed to have done its worst, and she was resigned to it.  I am sure it was no mere curiosity, but a desire to be of service, that led me to approach her and say, “Madam, where are you going?”

“The Lord only knows,” was the utterly candid response; but then, forgetting everything in her last misfortune and impelled to a burst of confidence, she began to tell me her troubles.  She informed me that her youngest daughter was about to be married, and that all her wedding-clothes and all her summer clothes were in that trunk; and as she said this she gave a glance out of the window as if she hoped it might be following her.  What would become of them all now, all brand new, she did n’t know, nor what would become of her or her daughter.  And then she told me, article by article and piece by piece, all that that trunk contained, the very names of which had an unfamiliar sound in a railway-car, and how many sets and pairs there were of each.  It seemed to be a relief to the old lady to make public this catalogue which filled all her mind; and there was a pathos in the revelation that I cannot convey in words.  And though I am compelled, by way of illustration, to give this incident, no bribery or torture shall ever extract from me a statement of the contents of that hair trunk.