"I confess I should like to have it finished up myself, if it could be finished up in the right way.""Well, we'll see. Dennis!" Lapham called to the remote porter, and the man came. "Want to send any word home?"he asked Corey.
"No; my father and I go and come as we like, without keeping account of each other. If I don't come home, he knows that I'm not there. That's all.""Well, that's convenient. You'll find you can't do that when you're married. Never mind, Dennis," said the Colonel.
He had time to buy two newspapers on the wharf before he jumped on board the steam-boat with Corey.
"Just made it," he said; "and that's what I like to do.
I can't stand it to be aboard much more than a minute before she shoves out." He gave one of the newspapers to Corey as he spoke, and set him the example of catching up a camp-stool on their way to that point on the boat which his experience had taught him was the best.
He opened his paper at once and began to run over its news, while the young man watched the spectacular recession of the city, and was vaguely conscious of the people about him, and of the gay life of the water round the boat.
The air freshened; the craft thinned in number; they met larger sail, lagging slowly inward in the afternoon light;the islands of the bay waxed and waned as the steamer approached and left them behind.
"I hate to see them stirring up those Southern fellows again,"said the Colonel, speaking into the paper on his lap.
"Seems to me it's time to let those old issues go.""Yes," said the young man. "What are they doing now?""Oh, stirring up the Confederate brigadiers in Congress.
I don't like it. Seems to me, if our party hain't got any other stock-in-trade, we better shut up shop altogether."Lapham went on, as he scanned his newspaper, to give his ideas of public questions, in a fragmentary way, while Corey listened patiently, and waited for him to come back to business. He folded up his paper at last, and stuffed it into his coat pocket. "There's one thing Ialways make it a rule to do," he said, "and that is to give my mind a complete rest from business while I'm going down on the boat. I like to get the fresh air all through me, soul and body. I believe a man can give his mind a rest, just the same as he can give his legs a rest, or his back.
All he's got to do is to use his will-power. Why, I suppose, if I hadn't adopted some such rule, with the strain I've had on me for the last ten years, I should 'a' been a dead man long ago. That's the reason I like a horse.
You've got to give your mind to the horse; you can't help it, unless you want to break your neck; but a boat's different, and there you got to use your will-power. You got to take your mind right up and put it where you want it.
I make it a rule to read the paper on the boat----Hold on!"he interrupted himself to prevent Corey from paying his fare to the man who had come round for it.
"I've got tickets. And when I get through the paper, I try to get somebody to talk to, or I watch the people.
It's an astonishing thing to me where they all come from.
I've been riding up and down on these boats for six or seven years, and I don't know but very few of the faces I see on board. Seems to be a perfectly fresh lot every time. Well, of course! Town's full of strangers in the summer season, anyway, and folks keep coming down from the country. They think it's a great thing to get down to the beach, and they've all heard of the electric light on the water, and they want to see it.
But you take faces now! The astonishing thing to me is not what a face tells, but what it don't tell.
When you think of what a man is, or a woman is, and what most of 'em have been through before they get to be thirty, it seems as if their experience would burn right through.
But it don't. I like to watch the couples, and try to make out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, or better be. But half the time I can't make any sort of guess. Of course, where they're young and kittenish, you can tell; but where they're anyways on, you can't.
Heigh?"
"Yes, I think you're right," said Corey, not perfectly reconciled to philosophy in the place of business, but accepting it as he must.
"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't suppose it was meant we should know what was in each other's minds. It would take a man out of his own hands. As long as he's in his own hands, there's some hopes of his doing something with himself;but if a fellow has been found out--even if he hasn't been found out to be so very bad--it's pretty much all up with him.
No, sir. I don't want to know people through and through."The greater part of the crowd on board--and, of course, the boat was crowded--looked as if they might not only be easily but safely known. There was little style and no distinction among them; they were people who were going down to the beach for the fun or the relief of it, and were able to afford it. In face they were commonplace, with nothing but the American poetry of vivid purpose to light them up, where they did not wholly lack fire.
