THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
Bressant jumped on to the platform of the newly-arrived train. The cars were pretty full; but, coming at last to a vacant seat by the side of a clean-shaven gentleman with a straight, hard mouth, and a glossy-brown wig, curling smoothly inward all around the edge, he dropped into it without ceremony.
The train left the depot and hurried away over the road which Bressant had just traversed in the opposite direction. He sat with his arms folded, appearing to take no notice of any thing, and his neighbor with the wig read the latest edition of a New-York paper with stern attention, occasionally altering the position of his stove-pipe hat on his head. By-and-by, the conductor, a small, precise man, with a dark-blue coat, cap to match, a neatly-trimmed sandy beard, shaved upper lip, and an utterance as distinct and clippy as the holes his steel punch made in the tickets, came along upon his rounds.
Bressant put his hands into his pockets, and discovered, with some consternation, that he had but a comparatively small amount of money left; his newly-accepted poverty was certainly losing no time in making itself felt. However, such as it was, he handed it to the conductor, and inquired how near it would take him to his proposed destination.
"Eighty-one miles, rail," responded the official, as he took and clipped the ticket of the gentleman with the newspaper; "comes shorter by road, seventy-four to seventy-five," and he proceeded down the aisle, snapping up tickets on one side or the other, as a hen does grains of corn.
Bressant covered his eyes with his hand, and amused himself by performing a little sum in mental arithmetic. The amount of money he had given the conductor represented a distance which it would take a certain length of time—say four hours—to traverse. It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and consequently would be eight before that distance was accomplished. From eight o'clock Saturday night, till twelve o'clock Sunday noon, was sixteen hours, and in sixteen hours he must travel, on foot, and through the snow, seventy-five miles of unknown roads.
"Four and a half miles an hour, and nothing to eat since breakfast," said Bressant to himself. He took his hand from his eyes, and passed it down his face to his beard, which he twisted and turned unmercifully. "It's lucky it isn't any more," remarked he, philosophically.
In the course of half an hour or so, the straight-mouthed gentleman, having finished the last column of his paper, folded it up into the smallest possible compass, and handed it politely to Bressant. The latter accepted it abstractedly, and, opening one fold, read the first paragraph which presented itself, his interest increasing as he proceeded. It was in the column of latest local news, and, after bewailing, in choice language, the frightful prevalence, even among the highest aristocracy, of opium-eating and kindred indulgences, it went on to particularize the sad case of an esteemed lady, of great wealth and high connections, widow of a scion of one of our oldest families, who, having unwisely yielded herself, during many years past, to an inordinate use of morphine, as an antidote to nervous disorder, had, on the previous evening, in a temporary paroxysm of madness, succeeded in taking her own life. "No other cause can be assigned for the rash act," pursued the paragraph, "Mrs. V—— being, in all other respects than as regarded this unfortunate weakness, blessed beyond the average. She was at the moment, it is understood, contemplating immediate departure for a lengthened sojourn in Europe, taking with her an only son, a young man of fine attainments, and a recent graduate of one of our first theological seminaries, who desired to seek, among the European capitals, at once for the recreation and culture, which the arduous preparation for and the enlightened prosecution of his exalted calling rendered respectively necessary and desirable. It is not known whether this sad casualty will cause him to relinquish his design."
After finishing this paragraph, which discreetly suppressed any further personality than to remark that the deceased bore one of those quaint old Knickerbocker surnames which are in New York synonymous with haut ton and gentility, Bressant folded up the paper, and, resting his arms upon the back of the seat in front of him, made them a pillow for his forehead. This position he maintained so long, that his neighbor with the wig came to the conclusion that he must be either asleep or drunk; and, by way of arriving at some solution of the question, abstracted from his hand the rolled-up newspaper which protruded out of it. At this the young man roused himself, and presently turned to him of the wig, and thanked him for his loan with an earnestness which appeared to him, under the circumstances, rather uncalled for. He began to doubt the prudence of sitting next to so large a man, of so singular a behavior, and took advantage of the next vacancy that occurred to shift his quarters, carrying the newspaper with him.
Darkness had fallen, and the lighted interior of the crowded car had duplicated itself, through the medium of the glass window-pane, upon the black vacancy without, long before the train halted at the station which marked the boundary of Bressant's riding privilege. He got out, and was immediately smitten in the face by the cold, impalpable fingers of a thick falling snow-storm.