Not far from this group sat two Hebrews, one young and the other old, talking of some business out of which the latter had retired.  The younger had been asked his opinion upon some point, and he was expanding with a flattered consciousness of the elder’s perception of his importance, and toadying to him with the pleasure which all young men feel in winning the favor of seniors in their vocation.  “Well, as I was a-say’n’, Isaac don’t seem to haf no natcheral pent for the glothing business.  Man gomes in and wands a goat,”—­he seemed to be speaking of a garment and not a domestic animal,—­“Isaac’ll zell him the goat he wands him to puy, and he’ll make him believe it ‘a the goat he was a lookin’ for.  Well, now, that’s well enough as far as it goes; but you know and I know, Mr. Rosenthal, that that ’s no way to do business.  A man gan’t zugzeed that goes upon that brincible.  Id’s wrong.  Id’s easy enough to make a man puy the goat you want him to, if he wands a goat, but the thing is to make him puy the goat that you wand to zell when he don’t wand no goat at all.  You’ve asked me what I thought and I’ve dold you.  Isaac’ll never zugzeed in the redail glothing-business in the world!”

“Well,” sighed the elder, who filled his armchair quite full, and quivered with a comfortable jelly-like tremor in it, at every pulsation of the engine, “I was afraid of something of the kind.  As you say, Benjamin, he don’t seem to have no pent for it.  And yet I proughd him up to the business; I drained him to it, myself.”

Besides these talkers, there were scattered singly, or grouped about in twos and threes and fours, the various people one encounters on a Hudson River boat, who are on the whole different from the passengers on other rivers, though they all have features in common.  There was that man of the sudden gains, who has already been typified; and there was also the smoother rich man of inherited wealth, from whom you can somehow know the former so readily.  They were each attended by their several retinues of womankind, the daughters all much alike, but the mothers somewhat different.  They were going to Saratoga, where perhaps the exigencies of fashion would bring them acquainted, and where the blue blood of a quarter of a century would be kind to the yesterday’s fluid of warmer hue.  There was something pleasanter in the face of the hereditary aristocrat, but not so strong, nor, altogether, so admirable; particularly if you reflected that he really represented nothing in the world, no great culture, no political influence, no civic aspiration, not even a pecuniary force, nothing but a social set, an alien club-life, a tradition of dining.  We live in a true fairy land after all, where the hoarded treasure turns to a heap of dry leaves.  The almighty dollar defeats itself, and finally buys nothing that a man cares to have.  The very highest pleasure that such an American’s money can purchase is exile, and to this rich man doubtless Europe is a twice-told tale.  Let us clap our empty pockets, dearest reader, and be glad.