If they go home at the end "high
sorrowful and cloyed," there is no forecast of it in their
demeanor, which is as little troubled as it is animated. The
young people are even openly gay, and the robustness of their
flirtations adds sensibly to the interest of the spectator. Our
own public lovers seem of a humbler sort, and they mostly content
themselves with the passive embraces of which every seat in our
parks affords an example; but in England such lovers add playful
struggles. A favorite pastime seemed to be for one of them to
hold something in the hand, and for the other to try prying it
open. When it was the young man who kept his hand shut, the
struggle could go on almost indefinitely. I suppose it led to
many engagements and marriages.
When the young people were not walking up and down, or playfully
scuffling, they were reading novels; in fact, I do not imagine
that anywhere else in the world is there a half, or a tenth part,
so much fiction consumed as in the English summer resorts. It is
probably of the innutritious lightness of pop-corn; I had never
the courage to look at the volumes which I could so easily have
overlooked; but I am sure it was all out of the circulating
library.
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