People constantly came and went in the waiting-room, which was sometimes
quite full, and again empty of all but themselves. In the course of their
observations they formed many cordial friendships and bitter enmities
upon the ground of personal appearance, or particulars of dress, with
people whom they saw for half a minute upon an average; and they took
such a keen interest in every one, that it would be hard to say whether
they were more concerned in an old gentleman with vigorously upright
iron-gray hair, who sat fronting them, and reading all the evening
papers, or a young man who hurled himself through the door, bought a
ticket with terrific precipitation, burst out again, and then ran down a
departing train before it got out of the station: they loved the old
gentleman for a certain stubborn benevolence of expression, and if they
had been friends of the young man and his family for generations and felt
bound if any harm befell him to go and break the news gently to his
parents, their nerves could not have been more intimately wrought upon by
his hazardous behavior. Still, as they had their tickets for New York,
and he was going out on a merely local train,--to Brookline, I believe,
they could not, even in their anxiety, repress a feeling of contempt for
his unambitious destination.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25