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of impatience, but adjusted their clothes and hurried on. Others, still
a numerous class, were restless in their movements, had flushed faces,
and talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if feeling in solitude
on account of the very denseness of the company around. When impeded in
their progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering, but re-doubled
their gesticulations, and awaited, with an absent and overdone smile
upon the lips, the course of the persons impeding them. If jostled,
they bowed profusely to the jostlers, and appeared overwhelmed with
confusion.--There was nothing very distinctive about these two large
classes beyond what I have noted. Their habiliments belonged to that
order which is pointedly termed the decent. They were undoubtedly
noblemen, merchants, attorneys, tradesmen, stock-jobbers--the Eupatrids
and the common-places of society--men of leisure and men actively
engaged in affairs of their own--conducting business upon their own
responsibility. They did not greatly excite my attention.
The tribe of clerks was an obvious one and here I discerned
two remarkable divisions. There were the junior clerks of flash
houses--young gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair,
and supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage,
which may be termed deskism for want of a better word, the manner of
these persons seemed to me an exact fac-simile of what had been the
perfection of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months before. They wore
the cast-off graces of the gentry;--and this, I believe, involves the
best definition of the class.
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