CHAPTER I.
The class of which I speak make themselves merry without duties. They sit in decorated club-houses in the cities, and burn tobacco and play whist; in the country they sit idle in stores and bar-rooms, and burn tobacco, and gossip and sleep. They complain of the flatness of American life; America has no illusions, no romance. They have no perception of its destiny. They are not Americans.—Emerson, The Fortune of the Republic.
It was on the evening of election day that I first saw her. I had come up from Salem to Boston, to spend the night and hear Booth and Barrett the next day, and I had gone to dine at aunt Madison’s on Louisburg Square.
The lamps had not been lighted, and we were all sitting cosily around the open grate after dinner, talking over the matinée, and jesting with two or three of Will’s college friends who were there for the evening, when the portière was noiselessly drawn aside, and Mildred Brewster came in with a cheery good evening.
I can recall now just how she looked, as, after the introductions were over, she stood leaning on the back of aunt Madison’s chair, with the ruddy glow of the firelight on her face, and her lithe figure dimly outlined against the shadowy background.
I did not notice her much at first, for, after her blithe greeting, on seeing strangers she had drawn back into the shadow and sat so quietly that I, carrying on a gay banter with the young men, had almost forgotten her.
I do not remember what was said at first. It did not make much impression on me at the time, until, after a while, the talk grew a little more serious, and the young men began to speak of their plans for the future. They were all seniors, and each of them, except Will, had plenty of money in his own right, with apparently nothing in life more burdensome to do than to draw checks and order dinners at Young’s.
They were a handsome trio, broad-chested, keen-eyed, clad in the daintiest of linen from Noyes Brothers,—“the jolliest swells in the class,” Will called them.
Aunt Madison asked them, apropos of the election, how they had voted, for they were all residents of Boston and had passed their majority. They were evidently rather amused at the query, but each and all politely replied that they hadn’t much enthusiasm about voting, and it having been a rainy day, they had not taken the trouble to go to the polls.
“You see, the fact is,” said the young man with the blonde mustache whom Will called Ned Conro, “voting is a confounded bore, any way.”