His friends were far away.
Suddenly the wheezy strains of the fiddles and the blare of the horns in the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the mountains sounded in his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous throng that tramped and capered and swung over the rough boards, setting the floor to swinging and the room to swaying, swam in a dim mist before his eyes.

Girls in ribbons so gay that they almost made the eyes ache, faces flushed with the excitement and joy of the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth, dishevelled hair, tarlatan dresses, green and pink and white; ringing laughter and whoops of real merriment--all passed before his senses.
As he stood looking on the scene of splendor, he felt lost, lonely, and for a moment homesick.

Here all was formal, stiff repressed; that gayety was real, that merriment was sincere.

With all their crudeness, those people in that condition were all human, hearty, strong, real.

He wondered if refinement and elegance meant necessarily a suppression of all these.