Page:What will he do with it.djvu/244

234  words, and redescended the carriage, when the train put itself into movement, and the lifelike iron miracle, fuming, hissing, and screeching, bore off to London its motley convoy of human beings, each passenger's heart a mystery to the other, all bound the same road, all wedged close within the same whirling mechanism: what a separate and distinct world in each! Such is Civilization! How like we are one to the other in the mass! how strangely dissimilar in the abstract!

is the race-week in Humberston, a county town far from Gatesboro', and in the north of England. The races last three days; the first day is over; it has been a brilliant spectacle; the course crowded with the carriages of provincial magnates, with equestrian betters of note from the metropolis; blacklegs in great muster; there have been gaming-booths on the ground, and gypsies telling fortunes; much Champagne imbibed by the well-bred, much soda-water and brandy by the vulgar. Thousands and tens of thousands have been lost and won; some paupers been for the time enriched; some rich men made poor for life. Horses have won fame; some of their owners lost character. Din and uproar, and coarse oaths, and rude passions—all have had their hour. The amateurs of the higher classes have gone back to dignified country-houses, as courteous hosts or favored guests. The professional speculators of a lower grade have poured back into the country town, and inns and taverns are crowded. Drink is hotly called for at reeking bars; waiters and chambermaids pass to and fro, with dishes, and tankards, and bottles, in their hands. All is noise and bustle, and eating and swilling, and disputation and slang, wild glee and wilder despair among those who come back from the race-course to the inns in the county town. At one of these taverns, neither the best nor the worst, and in a small narrow slice of a