drift hither and
thither upon each breath of wind, finding kinsmen never but comrades
everywhere--ask them if it is horrible."

This made me melancholy, and somehow set me thinking of the friends
immeasurably distant I had left but yesterday.

What were they doing? Did they miss me? I was to have called for my
pay this afternoon, and tomorrow was to have run down South to see that
freckled lady of mine. What would she think of my absence? What would
she think if she knew where I was? Gods, it was too mad, too absurd! I
thrust my hands into my pockets in fierce desperation, and there they
clutched an old dance programme and an out-of-date check for a New York
ferry-boat. I scowled about on that sunny, helpless people, and laying
my hand bitterly upon my heart felt in the breast-pocket beneath a
packet of unpaid Boston tailors' bills and a note from my landlady
asking if I would let her aunt do my washing while I was on shore. Oh!
what would they all think of me? Would they brand me as a deserter, a
poltroon, and a thief, letting my name presently sink down in shame and
mystery in the shadowy realm of the forgotten? Dreadful thoughts! I
would think no more.

Maybe An had marked my melancholy, for presently she led me to a stall
where in fantastic vases wines of sorts I have described before were
put out for all who came to try them. There was medicine here for
every kind of dulness--not the gross cure which earthly wine effects,
but so nicely proportioned to each specific need that one could
regulate one's debauch to a hairbreadth, rising through all the gamut
of satisfaction, from the staid contentment coming of that flask there
to the wild extravagances of the furthermost vase. So my stripling
told me, running her finger down the line of beakers carved with
strange figures and cased in silver, each in its cluster of little
attendant drinking-cups, like-coloured, and waiting round on the white
napkins as the shore boats wait to unload a cargo round the sides of a
merchant vessel.

"And what," I said, after curiously examining each liquor in turn,
"what is that which stands alone there in the humble earthen jar, as
though unworthy of the company of the others."

"Oh, that," said my friend, "is the most essential of them all--that is
the wine of recovery, without which all the others were deadly poisons."

"The which, lady, looks as if it had a moral attaching to it."

"It may have; indeed I think it has