may be a little ‘ennuye’ of sun-strokes, and to that degree indifferent, but they most likely know that they can only do harm by an expression of sympathy, and so they delegate their pity as they have delegated their helpfulness to the proper authority, and go about their business.  If a man was overcome in the middle of a village street, the blundering country druggist wouldn’t know what to do, and the tender-hearted people would crowd about so that no breath of air could reach the victim.”

“May be so, dear,” said the wife, pensively; but if anything did happen to you in New York, I should like to have the spectators look as if they saw a human being in trouble.  Perhaps I’m a little exacting.”

“I think you are.  Nothing is so hard as to understand that there are human beings in this world besides one’s self and one’s set.  But let us be selfishly thankful that it isn’t you and I there in the apothecary’s shop, as it might very well be; and let us get to the boat as soon as we can, and end this horrible midsummer-day’s dream.  We must have a carriage,” he added with tardy wisdom, hailing an empty hack, “as we ought to have had all day; though I’m not sorry, now the worst’s over, to have seen the worst.”

III.  THE NIGHT BOAT.

There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure:  a headache darkens the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really lightens the spirit bereft of all reasonable consolations.  Therefore I do not think it trivial or untrue to say that there is for the moment nothing more satisfactory in life than to have bought your ticket on the night boat up the Hudson and secured your state-room key an hour or two before departure, and some time even before the pressure at the clerk’s office has begun.  In the transaction with this castellated baron, you have of course been treated with haughtiness, but not with ferocity, and your self-respect swells with a sense of having escaped positive insult; your key clicks cheerfully in your pocket against its gutta-percha number, and you walk up and down the gorgeously carpeted, single-columned, two-story cabin, amid a multitude of plush sofas and chairs, a glitter of glass, and a tinkle of prismatic chandeliers overhead, unawed even by the aristocratic gloom of the yellow waiters.  Your own stateroom as you enter it from time to time is an ever-new surprise of splendors, a magnificent effect of amplitude, of mahogany bedstead, of lace curtains, and of marble topped wash-stand.  In the mere wantonness of an unalloyed prosperity you say to the saffron nobleman nearest your door, “Bring me a pitcher of ice-water, quick, please!” and you do not find the half-hour that he is gone very long.