y, and many folks were walking out--we looked curiously
about us, and while none were anything but tidy and decent, none had
any of the symptoms of much and to spare. They were evidently poor, but
far from poor in spirit.

We were puzzled by the Sabbath look of things to find a place to sit
down and apply some antidote to the effects of that rawish east wind. We
began drifting as usual, when an old fellow in black coat and Homburg
hat pushed past us, mumbling something. A light came swiftly into the
eyes of Mead and Bicker; the old fellow was fragrant with good beer.
We asked him for directions. He was off at once in a loud, hard voice:
"By Jesus Christ and General Jackson," he began (and _da capo_), "the
two best men in America. You come to my house." Following him, and coping
with his repeated invocations of the Messiah and the General, and requests
for an opinion of his English speech, we arrived by and by. He was an
innkeeper, and (by Jesus Christ) "an old sailing man himself."

The inn parlour was most excellently warm, free and easy. We set to with
hot grog, the brimmer being rebrimmed (if my memory serves me) not once
nor twice. The room was not one which depressed. Around it hung daubs
of full-rigged ships of Batavia in the fifties and sixties; there was an
automatic weighing machine, a most magnificent penny-in-the-slot piano,
and another apparatus for extracting copper from the air, dressed up as a
blue windmill, but I did not inquire what it was expected to yield. And
the wall-paper was tapped with an ample border, in which one saw smooth
waters, placid smacks, and more windmills.

The other occupants of the room were the quiet set at the tables, a
drunken Finn seaman with one arm in bandages, a dark-haired musician,
the landlord and his wife and their good-looking daughter; while from the
private house other members of the family came and went at need, as
will be seen.

We provided the landlord with grog. He melted with gratitude, rose,
and set his horrible piano going, whose wicked hammers champed upon some
of the harshest wires outside of the barbed-wire dumps. And what is
more, whenever the piano began, our friend the Finn thought his hour
had come to shine, and essayed a sort of stamping, stooping dance across
the floor. This led to persuasion. The landlord persuaded, the landlady
persuaded, unclassified assistants persuaded, and presently the dancer
was pleased to be seated once more, exclaiming, "Wh