At any rate, whenever the train stopped, the
wedding-journeyers caught fragments of the personal histories of their
fellow-passengers which had been rehearsing to those that sat next the
narrators. It was no more than fair that these should somewhat magnify
themselves, and put the best complexion on their actions and the worst
upon their sufferings; that they should all appear the luckiest or the
unluckiest, the healthiest or the sickest, people that ever were, and
should all have made or lost the most money. There was a prevailing
desire among them to make out that they came from or were going to same
very large place; and our friends fancied an actual mortification in the
face of a modest gentleman who got out at Penelope (or some other
insignificant classical station, in the ancient Greek and Roman part of
New York State), after having listened to the life of a somewhat
rustic-looking person who had described himself as belonging near New
York City.
Basil also found diversion in the tender couples, who publicly comported
themselves as if in a sylvan solitude, and, as it had been on the bank of
some umbrageous stream, far from the ken of envious or unsympathetic
eyes, reclined upon each other's shoulders and slept; but Isabel declared
that this behavior was perfectly indecent.
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