I have; it is like a good many other foreign towns. I am melancholy.
I _can't_ dismiss that miserable luggage from my mind. To be alone
in a foreign land, without so much as a clean sock, is a distressing
position for a sensitive person. If I could only succeed in seeing a
humorous element in it, it would be _something_--but I can't. It is
too forlorn to be at all funny. And there is still an hour and a half
to get through before dinner!

I have dined--in a small room, with a stove, a carved buffet, and a
portrait of the King of the BELGIANS; but my spirits are still low.
German Waiter dubious about me; reserving his opinion for the present.
He comes in with a touch of new deference in his manner. "Please,
a man from de shdation for you." I go out--to find the sympathetic
Porter. My baggage has arrived? It has; it is at the Douane, waiting
for me. I am saved! I tell the Waiter, without elation, but with
what, I trust, is a calm dignity--the dignity of a man who has been
misunderstood, but would scorn to resent it.

_At the Station._--I have accompanied the Porter to the Terminus, such
a pleasant helpful fellow, so intelligent! The Ostend streets much
less dull at night. Feel relieved, in charity with all the world, now
that my prodigal portmanteau is safely reclaimed. Porter takes me
into a large luggage-room. Don't see my things just at first. "Your
baggage--_ere!_" says the Porter, proudly, and points out a little
drab valise with shiny black leather covers and brass studs--the kind
of thing a man goes a journey with in a French Melodrama! He is quite
hurt when I repudiate it indignantly; he tries to convince me that
it is mine--the fool! There is no other baggage of any sort, and mine
can't possibly arrive now before to-morrow afternoon, if then. Nothing
for it but to go back, luggageless, to the Hotel--and face that
confounded Waiter.

Walk about the streets. Somehow I don't feel quite up to going back
to the Hotel just yet. The shops, which are small and rather dimly
lighted, depress me. There is no theatre, nor _cafe chantant_ open
apparently. If there were, I haven't the heart for them to-night. Hear
music from a small _estaminet_ in a back street; female voice, with
fine Cockney accent, is singing "_Oh, dem Golden Slippers!_" Wonder
where _my_ slippers are!

_In my Bedroom._--I have had to come back at last, and get it
over with the Waiter. If he felt _any_ surprise, I think it was
to see me back at all. I