y white
glove--things tossed out of people's lives. On and on they came. And I
knew there were miles of black water like this all covered with tiny
processions like this moving slowly out with the ebb tide, out from the
turbulent city toward the silent ocean. One night the watchman on the
dump showed me a heavy paper bag with what would have been a baby
inside. Where had it come from? He didn't know. Tossed out of some
woman's life, in a day it would be far out on the ocean, bobbing,
bobbing with the rest. Water from here to Naples, water from here to
heathen lands. Just here a patch of light from a lantern. That imp from
Italy looking down--into something immense and dark and unknown.

He was having a spree with the harbor, as I had had when as small as he.
I saw him watch the older boys and listen thrilled to their wonderful
talk--as once I, too, had been thrilled by Sam. I watched him over a
game of dice, quarreling, scowling, grabbing at pennies, slapped by some
one, whimpering, then eagerly getting back to the game. It was "craps,"
I had played it with Sam and the gang. One night he dropped a cigarette
still lighted into the rags and was given a blow by his boss that
knocked him into a corner. But presently he crawled cautiously forth,
and again with both hands hugging his knees he sat and watched the
harbor. What a big spree for a little boy.

I put my own childhood into this imp, into him my first feelings toward
this place. And so I came again to my roots. How the memories rose up
now--the fascinations and terrors that I, too, had felt before something
immense and dark and unknown.

Thank heaven J. K. had given me up and gone to Colorado--so I was left
to work in peace. I called my sketch "A Patch of Light," and sent it to
a magazine. It came back with a note explaining that, while this was a
fine little thing in its way, its way wasn't theirs, it was neither an
article full of facts nor a story full of romance. In short, I told
myself savagely, it was neither hay nor tears! Again it went forth and
again back it came. Then Sue gave it to one of her writer friends who
said he knew just the place for it.

"No, you don't," I thought drearily. "Nobody knows--in this whole
damnable desolate land."

But Sue's friend sold my story--for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents!
And he said that the editor wanted some more!

It was curious, from my window that night, what a different harbor I saw
below. Ugly still? Of c