Their Pilgrimage. Charles Dudley Warner

was arriving; the stalwart scrubbers were at work, the store-rooms were filled, the big kitchen shone with its burnished coppers, and an array of white-capped and aproned cooks stood in line under their chef; the telegraph operator was waiting at her desk, the drug clerk was arranging his bottles, the newspaper stand was furnished, the post-office was open for letters. It needed but the arrival of a guest to set the machinery in motion. And as soon as the guest came the band would be there to launch him into the maddening gayety of the season. It would welcome his arrival in triumphant strains; it would pursue him at dinner, and drown his conversation; it will fill his siesta with martial dreams, and it would seize his legs in the evening, and entreat him to caper in the parlor. Everything was ready. And this was what happened. It was the evening of the opening day. The train wagons might be expected any moment. The electric lights were blazing. All the clerks stood expectant, the porters were by the door, the trim, uniformed bell-boys were all in waiting line, the register clerk stood fingering the leaves of the register with a gracious air. A noise is heard outside, the big door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly dressed young lady, and a dog. Movement, welcome, ringing of bells, tramping of feet—the whole machinery has started. It was adjusted to crack an egg-shell or smash an iron-bound trunk. The few drops presaged a shower. The next day there were a hundred on the register; the day after, two hundred; and the day following, an excursion.

      With increasing arrivals opportunity was offered for the study of character. Away from his occupation, away from the cares of the household and the demands of society, what is the self-sustaining capacity of the ordinary American man or woman? It was interesting to note the enthusiasm of the first arrival, the delight in the view—Round Top, the deep gorges, the charming vista of the lowlands, a world and wilderness of beauty; the inspiration of the air, the alertness to explore in all directions, to see the lake, the falls, the mountain paths. But is a mountain sooner found out than a valley, or is there a want of internal resources, away from business, that the men presently become rather listless, take perfunctory walks for exercise, and are so eager for meal-time and mail-time? Why do they depend so much upon the newspapers, when they all despise the newspapers? Mr. King used to listen of an evening to the commonplace talk about the fire, all of which was a dilution of what they had just got out of the newspapers, but what a lively assent there was to a glib talker who wound up his remarks with a denunciation of the newspapers! The man was no doubt quite right, but did he reflect on the public loss of his valuable conversation the next night if his newspaper should chance to fail? And the women, after their first feeling of relief, did they fall presently into petty gossip, complaints about the table, criticisms of each other's dress, small discontents with nearly everything? Not all of them.

      An excursion is always resented by the regular occupants of a summer resort, who look down upon the excursionists, while they condescend to be amused by them. It is perhaps only the common attitude of the wholesale to the retail dealer, although it is undeniable that a person seems temporarily to change his nature when he becomes part of an excursion; whether it is from the elation at the purchase of a day of gayety below the market price, or the escape from personal responsibility under a conductor, or the love of being conspicuous as a part of a sort of organization, the excursionist is not on his ordinary behavior.

      An excursion numbering several hundreds, gathered along the river towns by the benevolent enterprise of railway officials, came up to the mountain one day. The officials seemed to have run a drag-net through factories, workshops, Sunday-schools, and churches, and scooped in the weary workers at homes and in shops unaccustomed to a holiday. Our friends formed a part of a group on the hotel piazza who watched the straggling arrival of this band of pleasure. For by this time our two friends had found a circle of acquaintances, with the facility of watering-place life, which in its way represented certain phases of American life as well as the excursion. A great many writers have sought to classify and label and put into a paragraph a description of the American girl. She is not to be disposed of by any such easy process. Undoubtedly she has some common marks of nationality that distinguish her from the English girl, but in variety she is practically infinite, and likely to assume almost any form, and the characteristics of a dozen nationalities. No one type represents her. What, indeed, would one say of this little group on the hotel piazza, making its comments upon the excursionists? Here is a young lady of, say, twenty-three years, inclining already to stoutness, domestic, placid, with matron written on every line of her unselfish face, capable of being, if necessity were, a notable housekeeper, learned in preserves and jellies and cordials, sure to have her closets in order, and a place for every remnant, piece of twine, and all odds and ends. Not a person to read Browning with, but to call on if one needed a nurse, or a good dinner, or a charitable deed. Beside her, in an invalid's chair, a young girl, scarcely eighteen, of quite another sort, pale, slight, delicate, with a lovely face and large sentimental eyes, all nerves, the product, perhaps, of a fashionable school, who in one season in New York, her first, had utterly broken down into what is called nervous prostration. In striking contrast was Miss Nettie Sumner, perhaps twenty-one, who corresponded more nearly to what the internationalists call the American type; had evidently taken school education as a duck takes water, and danced along in society into apparent robustness of person and knowledge of the world. A handsome girl, she would be a comely woman, good-natured, quick at repartee, confining her knowledge of books to popular novels, too natural and frank to be a flirt, an adept in all the nice slang current in fashionable life, caught up from collegians and brokers, accustomed to meet men in public life, in hotels, a very “jolly” companion, with a fund of good sense that made her entirely capable of managing her own affairs. Mr. King was at the moment conversing with still another young lady, who had more years than the last-named-short, compact figure, round girlish face, good, strong, dark eyes, modest in bearing, self-possessed in manner, sensible-who made ready and incisive comments, and seemed to have thought deeply on a large range of topics, but had a sort of downright practicality and cool independence, with all her femininity of bearing, that rather, puzzled her interlocutor. It occurred to Mr. King to guess that Miss Selina Morton might be from Boston, which she was not, but it was with a sort of shock of surprise that he learned later that this young girl, moving about in society in the innocent panoply of girlhood, was a young doctor, who had no doubt looked through and through him with her keen eyes, studied him in the light of heredity, constitutional tendencies, habits, and environment, as a possible patient. It almost made him ill to think of it. Here were types enough for one morning; but there was still another.