"I am glad to see you are not ashamed to show a little enthusiasm," said Benson, as he marked his friend leaning over the forward railing, absorbed in the view before him. "Some people don't care much for this sort of thing. There's my cousin Ludlow, how supremely indifferent he is to it all! He is talking to my wife about the last comic opera he saw in Paris, which represents Shakespeare and Queen Bess getting very jolly together." "Certainly one would hardly be able to tell what countryman Ludlow was, without previous knowledge. He seems, like many of your fashionables, very much out of place here." "That's true enough; and the man most out of place among them all is my brother Carl, whom we are just going to visit." Ashburner's recollection and knowledge of Carl Benson were pretty much comprised in a certain luncheon at Ravenswood, which he had found very much in place, and a very good place for. Henry went on to explain himself. "He prides himself on a regard for two things--sincerity and equity--two very estimable virtues, no doubt, but capable of being ridden to death like all hobbies." Benson further proceeded to state that he was afraid they would find his brother in no very genial mood--that, in fact, he had two special reasons at that time for being in bad humor. The anti-rent epidemic had broken out in the vicinity, and his place was threatened with perforation by a railroad. The former, however perilous to some of his acquaintance, was no very terrible danger to Carl himself, he having as many tenants in the country as his brother had in town--to wit, just one. The latter was considerably more serious in itself, and rendered particularly aggravating by attendant circumstances. An equally convenient and much safer inland route for the railway had been originally proposed; but Mr. Jobson, the chief engineer, started the project of a new one close along the shore, running through the beautiful private grounds that lined the whole east bank of the river for a hundred and fifty miles. The true motive for this change was, that the company would thus have to pay less for right of way, since the inland route would have passed through the cornfields and vegetable-grounds of farmers, to whom they must have made full compensation at the market value of the land, whereas by cutting through a private lawn they could take the ground at a merely nominal rate, the damage caused to a gentleman by the destruction of his place for all the purposes of a country-seat being a "fancy value," which jurors and commissioners chosen from the mass of the people, and regarding the aristocratic landholder with an envious eye, would never pay the least attention to. But either from a lingering regard for outward decency, or from some other motive, this, the real reason, met with only a passing allusion in Mr. Jobson's report. He came out boldly, and recommended the river route as calculated to improve