. Had you come over there, you would not have been
a man; but I became so! And besides, I learned to know my inward
nature, my innate qualities, the relationship I had with Poesy. At the
time I was with you, I thought not of that, but always--you know it
well--when the sun rose, and when the sun went down, I became so
strangely great; in the moonlight I was very near being more distinct
than yourself; at that time I did not understand my nature; it was
revealed to me in the antechamber! I became a man!--I came out
matured; but you were no longer in the warm lands;--as a man I was
ashamed to go as I did. I was in want of boots, of clothes, of the
whole human varnish that makes a man perceptible. I took my way--I
tell it to you, but you will not put it in any book--I took my way to
the cake woman--I hid myself behind her; the woman didn't think how
much she concealed. I went out first in the evening; I ran about the
streets in the moonlight; I made myself long up the walls--it tickles
the back so delightfully! I ran up, and ran down, peeped into the
highest windows, into the saloons, and on the roofs, I peeped in where
no one could peep, and I saw what no one else saw, what no one else
should see! This is, in fact, a base world! I would not be a man if it
were not now once accepted and regarded as something to be so! I saw
the most unimaginable things with the women, with the men, with
parents, and with the sweet, matchless children; I saw," said the
shadow "what no human being must know, but what they would all so
willingly know--what is bad in their neighbor. Had I written a
newspaper, it would have been read! but I wrote direct to the persons
themselves, and there was consternation in all the towns where I came.
They were so afraid of me, and yet they were so excessively fond of
me. The professors made a professor of me; the tailors gave me new
clothes--I am well furnished; the master of the mint struck new coin
for me, and the women said I was so handsome! and so I became the man
I am. And I now bid you farewell;--here is my card--I live on the
sunny side of the street, and am always at home in rainy weather!" And
so away went the shadow.

"That was most extraordinary!" said the learned man.

Years and days passed away, then the shadow came again.

"How goes it?" said the shadow.

"Alas!" said the learned man, "I write about the true, and the good,
and the beautiful, but no one cares to hear such things; I am quit