hotel. When you arrive there, you
will go to the head clerk's desk and hand him your card." Here she gave
me a small package of visiting cards on which was inscribed "John
Convert." "You will then ask to be shown to your apartments, which have
been settled for in advance for one year, after which make yourself as
comfortable as possible in the place. Do not mention your business in
any way as it pertains to you and me. It will be impossible for me to
see you as often as I should like, but whenever it is convenient I shall
have you come and see me. I am stopping at a different hotel in another
part of the city, and for reasons best known to myself, I shall continue
to withhold my last name from you, as you seem to have no recollection
of it whatever, and it will also be necessary for the present to meet
you in some out-of-the-way place, which I will designate later. Perhaps
some day you will learn who I am, and all about me, but until I am ready
to furnish you with further information concerning my identity, I shall
rely upon your honor as a man not to undertake, by any methods
whatsoever, to discover who I am, or where I reside."

With this mysterious admonition and a tender farewell, Arletta left me
in the depth of meditation as to what strange occurrence nature's
storehouse might still contain for me, and a few minutes later I was
notified that the carriage was in waiting.

CHAPTER XXVII

It would be almost impossible to record my impressions of the different
things that came to my notice for the first time in twenty-one years, as
I was driven from the hospital to the hotel.

While great progress had taken place in many lines during that time,
still after having had such a realistic mental picture of the wonders of
Sage-land stamped upon my mind, the new inventions, such as trolley
cars, automobiles, etc., which I had never seen before, seemed crude and
insignificant.

As I passed from street to street I could not fail to observe the great
disorder that prevailed everywhere, in the foremost city of the world.
In the first place, I was struck by the inharmonious and ragged
appearance of the buildings. Here was a tall skyscraper of nice white
marble thirty stories high, towering up into the clouds like a great
beanpole, while on one side of it was a squatty little two-story red
brick structure, and on the other side a six-story brown stone building,
the whole forming a most irregular and distracting appearance to t