inking before he thrusts out a foot into
the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a
worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he
had best stay unpecked inside his coverlet.

It is hard to realize that other two-legged creatures like myself are
habitually awake at this hour. In a wakeful night I may have heard the
whistles and the clank of far-off wheels, and I may have known dimly
that work goes on; yet for the most part I have fancied that the
world, like a river steamboat in a fog, is tied at night to its shore:
or if it must go plunging on through space to keep a schedule, that
here and there a light merely is set upon a tower to warn the planets.

A locomotive was straining at its buttons, and from the cab a smoky
engineer looked down on me. A truck load of boxes rattled down the
platform. Crates of affable familiar hens were off upon a journey,
bragging of their families. Men with flaring tapers tapped at wheels.
The waiting-room, too, kept, as it were, one eye open to the night.
The coffee-urn steamed on the lunch counter, and sandwiches sat inside
their glass domes and looked darkly on the world.

It was the hour when "the tired burglar seeks his bed." I had thought
of dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a flood
appeared in the persons of three scrub women. The fountains of the
great deep were opened and the waters prevailed.

It still lacked an hour or so of daylight. I remembered that there
used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels--to the vulgar, a
dog-wagon--up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had
appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons.
As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity
play. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy--sworn by the moon and
the seven wandering stars--but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot.
It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, it
seems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian Senator, kept this same
dog-wagon--he and his beautiful daughter Desdemona. Here came Othello,
Iago and Cassio of the famous class of umpty-ump.

The scene of the drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties on
the iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tender
juices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turned
he makes love to Desdemona--a handsome fellow, this Othello, with the
manner of a hero and curled mo