d the pathways of the park, or sat forlornly in
Portsmouth Square as remote from it all as a gazer on his mountain top
beneath the stars.

I became a dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas
was ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge,
with eyes fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free,
irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced, entirely misspent. I
came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged into an
under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but
it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I
rubbed shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in
frowsy bar-rooms, and amid the scum and debris of the waterside found
much food for sober thought. Yet at times I blamed myself for thus
misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle and Mother and Garry loomed
up with reproachful vividness.

I was, too, a seeker of curious experience, and this was to prove my
undoing. The night-side of the city was unveiled to me. With the
assurance of innocence I wandered everywhere. I penetrated the warrens
of underground Chinatown, wondering why white women lived there, and why
they hid at sight of me. Alone I poked my way into the opium joints and
the gambling dens. Vice, amazingly unabashed, flaunted itself in my
face. I wondered what my grim, Covenanting ancestors would have made of
it all. I never thought to have seen the like, and in my inexperience it
was like a shock to me.

My nocturnal explorations came to a sudden end. One foggy midnight,
coming up Pacific Street with its glut of saloons, I was clouted
shrewdly from behind and dropped most neatly in the gutter. When I came
to, very sick and dizzy in a side alley, I found I had been robbed of my
pocketbook with nearly all my money therein. Fortunately I had left my
watch in the hotel safe, and by selling it was not entirely destitute;
but the situation forced me from my citadel of pleasant dreams, and
confronted me with the grimmer realities of life.

I became a habitue of the ten-cent restaurant. I was amazed to find how
excellent a meal I could have for ten cents. Oh for the uncaptious
appetite of these haphazard days! With some thirty-odd dollars standing
between me and starvation, it was obvious I must become a hewer of wood
and a drawer of water, and to this end I haunted the employment offices.
They were bare, sordid rooms, crowded by men w