g or in the days of October
when there are winds across the earth and gorgeous panic of fallen
leaves--are you of that elect who, on such occasion or any occasion else,
feel stirrings in you to be quit of whatever prosy work is yours, to throw
down your book or ledger, or your measuring tape--if such device marks
your service--and to go forth into the world?

I do count myself of this elect. And I will name such stimuli as most set
these stirrings in me. And first of all there is a smell compounded out of
hemp and tar that works pleasantly to my undoing. Now it happens that
there is in this city, down by the river where it flows black with city
stain as though the toes of commerce had been washed therein, a certain
ship chandlery. It is filthy coming on the place, for there is reek from
the river and staleness from the shops--ancient whiffs no wise enfeebled
by their longevity, Nestors of their race with span of seventy lusty
summers. But these smells do not prevail within the chandlery. At first
you see nothing but rope. Besides clothesline and other such familiar and
domestic twistings, there are great cordages scarce kinsmen to them, which
will later put to sea and will whistle with shrill enjoyment at their
release. There are such hooks, swivels, blocks and tackles, such confusion
of ships' devices as would be enough for the building of a sea tale. It
may be fancied that here is Treasure Island itself, shuffled and laid
apart in bits like a puzzle-picture. (For genius, maybe, is but a
nimbleness of collocation of such hitherto unconsidered trifles.) Then you
will go aloft where sails are made, with sailormen squatting about,
bronzed fellows, rheumatic, all with pipes. And through all this shop is
the smell of hemp and tar.

In finer matters I have no nose. It is ridiculous, really, that this very
messenger and forerunner of myself, this trumpeter of my coming, this
bi-nasal fellow in the crow's-nest, should be so deficient. If smells were
bears, how often I would be bit! My nose may serve by way of ornament or
for the sniffing of the heavier odors, yet will fail in the nice detection
of the fainter waftings and olfactory ticklings. Yet how will it dilate on
the Odyssean smell of hemp and tar! And I have no explanation of this, for
I am no sailor. Indeed, at sea I am misery itself whenever perchance "the
ship goes _wop_ (with a wiggle between)." Such wistful glances have I cast
upon the wide freedom of the decks when