traveller. And the occasion which produced that prosaic thought was a
night well calculated to make one think of supper and fireside, though
the one might be frugal and the other lonely, and as I, Gulliver Jones,
the poor foresaid Navy lieutenant, with the honoured stars of our Republic
on my collar, and an undeserved snub from those in authority rankling in
my heart, picked my way homeward by a short cut through the dismalness
of a New York slum I longed for steak and stout, slippers and a pipe,
with all the pathetic keenness of a troubled soul.

It was a wild, black kind of night, and the weirdness of it showed up
as I passed from light to light or crossed the mouths of dim alleys
leading Heaven knows to what infernal dens of mystery and crime even
in this latter-day city of ours. The moon was up as far as the church
steeples; large vapoury clouds scudding across the sky between us and
her, and a strong, gusty wind, laden with big raindrops snarled angrily
round corners and sighed in the parapets like strange voices talking
about things not of human interest.

It made no difference to me, of course. New York in this year of grace
is not the place for the supernatural be the time never so fit for
witch-riding and the night wind in the chimney-stacks sound never so
much like the last gurgling cries of throttled men. No! the world was
very matter-of-fact, and particularly so to me, a poor younger son with
five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a packet of unpaid bills
in my breastpocket, and round my neck a locket with a portrait therein
of that dear buxom, freckled, stub-nosed girl away in a little southern
seaport town whom I thought I loved with a magnificent affection. Gods!
I had not even touched the fringe of that affliction.

Thus sauntering along moodily, my chin on my chest and much too absorbed