he limits
of the city, and was known to many lovers of good English. I had
discovered a new slum, a place of precarious sandy cliffs, deep sandy
cuttings, solitary ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets. It was
already environed. The ranks of the street lamps threaded it unbroken.
The city, upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with
traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept away;
but it offered then, within narrow limits, a delightful peace, and (in
the morning, when I chiefly went there) a seclusion almost rural. On a
steep sand-hill in this neighbourhood toppled, on the most insecure
foundation, a certain row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all
(I have to presume) inhabited. Thither I used to mount by a crumbling
footpath, and in front of the last of the houses would sit down to
sketch.

The very first day I saw I was observed out of the ground-floor window
by a youngish, good-looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with an
expression both lively and engaging. The second, as we were still the
only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that we
should nod. The third he came out fairly from his entrenchments, praised
my sketch, and with the _impromptu_ cordiality of artists carried me
into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a museum of
strange objects--paddles, and battle-clubs, and baskets, rough-hewn
stone images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoa-nut bowls, snowy
cocoa-nut plumes--evidences and examples of another earth, another
climate, another race, and another (if a ruder) culture. Nor did these
objects lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new
acquaintance. Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how he
tramped and starved, and had so fine a profit of living in his days
among the islands; and meeting him as I did, one artist with another,
after months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he
would speak, and with what pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks,
which we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names--first
fell under the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first
of them that I returned (a happy man) with "Omoo" under one arm, and my
friend's own adventures under the other.

The second incident was more dramatic, and had, besides, a bearing on my
future. I was standing one day near a boat-landing under Telegraph Hill.
A large barque, perhaps of