foreman's tyranny, or the bad customers that made them call again and
again for payment.

To come out of my own ways of life, to be another than myself through
a kind of intoxication of the intellectual faculties, and to play this
game at will, such was my recreation. Whence comes the gift? Is it a
kind of second sight? Is it one of those powers which when abused end
in madness? I have never tried to discover its source; I possess it, I
use it, that is all. But this it behooves you to know, that in those
days I began to resolve the heterogeneous mass known as the People
into its elements, and to evaluate its good and bad qualities. Even
then I realized the possibilities of my suburb, that hotbed of
revolution in which heroes, inventors, and practical men of science,
rogues and scoundrels, virtues and vices, were all packed together by
poverty, stifled by necessity, drowned in drink, and consumed by
ardent spirits.

You would not imagine how many adventures, how many tragedies, lie
buried away out of sight in that Dolorous City; how much horror and
beauty lurks there. No imagination can reach the Truth, no one can go
down into that city to make discoveries; for one must needs descend
too low into its depths to see the wonderful scenes of tragedy or
comedy enacted there, the masterpieces brought forth by chance.

I do not know how it is that I have kept the following story so long
untold. It is one of the curious things that stop in the bag from
which Memory draws out stories at haphazard, like numbers in a
lottery. There are plenty of tales just as strange and just as well
hidden still left; but some day, you may be sure, their turn will
come.