Those who came
aboard at Rochester failed to lighten the spiritual gloom, and presently
they sank into the common bodily wretchedness. The train was somewhat
belated, and as it drew nearer Buffalo they knew the conductor to have
abandoned himself to that blackest of the arts, making time. The long
irregular jolt of the ordinary progress was reduced to an incessant
shudder and a quick lateral motion. The air within the cars was deadly;
if a window was raised, a storm of dust and cinders blew in and quick
gusts caught away the breath. So they sat with closed windows, sweltering
and stifling, and all the faces on which a lively horror was not painted
were dull and damp with apathetic misery.
The incidents were in harmony with the abject physical tone of the
company. There was a quarrel between a thin, shrill-voiced, highly
dressed, much-bedizened Jewess, on the one side, and a fat, greedy old
woman, half asleep, and a boy with large pink transparent ears that stood
out from his head like the handles of a jar, on the other side, about a
seat which the Hebrew wanted, and which the others had kept filled with
packages on the pretense that it was engaged. It was a loud and fierce
quarrel enough, but it won no sort of favor; and when the Jewess had
given a final opinion that the greedy old woman was no lady, and the boy,
who disputed in an ironical temper, replied, "Highly complimentary, I
must say," there was no sign of relief or other acknowledgment in any of
the spectators, that there had been a quarrel.
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