"We had a pleasant day for our journey, but the train was uncomfortably crowded. A succession of way-passengers, one after another, absorbed our vacant seat, and prevented the girls from indulging in that exchange of secret, and in general highly-laughable, confidences with which young people of their age are always bubbling over. Some of these local passengers were not very pleasant company, being frequently encumbered with market-baskets which were not only in everybody's way, but proclaimed by unmistakable odors the nature of their contents. Seeing that it was impossible for us to retain the fourth seat, and having learned from the conductor that there was no room in the parlor-car, it was really a great relief, as a certainty of escape from unpleasant companionship, when the same young gentleman who had kindly helped me at the ticket-office came up and asked if we had any objection to his sitting there, as he had given up two seats in succession to ladies, and had been standing the most of the time since we left New York. Of course we assented, and for the first time I examined our fellow-traveller minutely. He was very good-looking--a blond, a style of coloring that I have always particularly admired in a man when it does not degenerate into effeminacy, as it certainly did not in this instance. In figure he was tall and slender, with the erect and graceful carriage of the accomplished soldier, not the awkward stiffness of the recruit. His eyes were a deep, rich blue, almost violet--eyes that in themselves would have been sufficient to make a woman's reputation for beauty: his long silken moustache shaded from blond to golden red, and was parted fanlike over his vermilion lips, fragrant and glowing with youth and health. His manners were essentially those of distinguished society, and his well-cut gray travelling-suit, his superlatively fine linen, his tiny gold watch-chain with a valuable pearl set in the slide, his fresh gloves, his dark-blue necktie carelessly twisted in a sailor's knot, his fine shoes fitting every curve of his aristocratic foot and covered by neat cloth gaiters buttoned at the side, his elegant travelling-rug rolled in a pair of Russia-leather straps, his stylish umbrella, his fine handkerchief embroidered evidently in Paris in quite a new way--a fac-simile of a seal in red wax, with a monogram and crest standing out upon it--above all, his silver-fitted travelling-bag, even finer than those we had priced at Tiffany's for one hundred and fifty dollars each,--all gave evidence of a position of something more than ease in regard to money; while his beautifully-white teeth, his exactly-parted hair, his scrupulously-tended hands, all spoke of that extreme care of the person which unmistakably indicates the habit of contact with people of dignity and good-breeding. Remember, friends, I did not judge my new friend from the point of view, naturally restricted, of Hurville.