The straggling street was full of men, and I should not think
in the world there can be a collection of more splendid looking
humanity--all young and strong and wholesome. The Senator says life is
so impossibly difficult here that only those in the best of health can
stand it, and to face such chances requires the buoyancy and hope of
youth. Whatever the cause they were all lovely creatures, just like our
guardsmen, numbers tall and slender and thin through, and many of them
might have been the Eton eleven or Oxford eight, and all with the
insouciance and careless grace I have already told you of.
You know what I mean by "thin through," Mamma: that lovely look of
narrow hips and slender waist and fine shoulders, not padded and not
too square, and looked at sideways not a bit thick; the chest, not the
tummy, the most sticking out part, and the general expression of race
horses. You would have to melt off layers of hips and other bits of most
of the Eastern American, and then alter the set of their bones to get
them to resemble any of these. And yet I suppose they are all Americans,
too, drifted here from other States; but they look so absolutely
different; I expect they are not the conglomeration of all nations who
have emigrated, like in New York, but the original pure stock.
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