South Seas, whither preachers of the Gospel of peace are sent; but is a
civilized city and proportionately unsafe.

A cross-street was lowered a little, and it leaped the chasm in an agony
of wood and iron, the most unlovely object in a city that is made up of
all unloveliness. The gutting of this Hill cost the city the fortunes of
several contractors, and it ruined the Hill forever. There is nothing
left to be done now but to cast it into the midst of the sea. I had
sported on the green with the goats of goatland ere ever the stately
mansion had been dreamed of; and it was my fate to set up my tabernacle
one day in the ruins of a house that even then stood upon the order of
its going,--it did go impulsively down into that "most unkindest cut,"
the Second Street chasm. Even the place that once knew it has followed
after.

The ruin I lived in had been a banker's Gothic home. When Rincon Hill
was spoiled by bloodless speculators, he abandoned it and took up his
abode in another city. A tenant was left to mourn there. Every summer
the wild winds shook that forlorn ruin to its foundations. Every winter
the rains beat upon it and drove through and through it, and undermined
it, and made a mush of the rock and soil about it; and later portions of
that real estate deposited themselves, pudding-fashion, in the yawning
abyss below.

I sat within, patiently awaiting the day of doom; for well I knew that
my hour must come. I could not remain suspended in midair for any length
of time: the fall of the house at the northwest corner of Harrison and
Second Streets must mark my fall. While I was biding my time, there came
to me a lean, lithe stranger. I knew him for a poet by his unshorn locks
and his luminous eyes, the pallor of his face and his exquisitely