At the end of nine hours of travel through the sort of scenery that would make the decorations of a modern New York hotel a restful diversion, Jim thought even a game of coon can with a traveling-man which, as everybody knows, is the world’s most futile method of passing time—would be a boon from heaven. But there was neither drummer nor cards. He was not the sort of person who could sit and think, and when tired of that omit the thinking and just sit. So he brooded. Long before he reached Diversity he was terribly sorry for himself, which, after all, is a species of mild pleasure enjoyed by many. One conclusion he did reach—namely, that Diversity must be the ultimate fag-end of desolation trimmed with a fringe of black despair. When the train stopped at Diversity’s depot he looked out and felt that conclusion to be sound. The first thing he saw was heat. He could see it rising in little wiggling waves from the blackened sand; he could see it at work raising more blisters on the paint of the station; he could see it struggling in vain to reduce the weight of the baggage-master, who was also telegraph-operator, station-agent, porter, and information bureau. The next thing he saw was a jumble of form and color that would have made immortal a cubist who could have caught it and labeled it “A Hole Raveled in Civilization’s Heel.” But if the cubist had caught it he probably would have called it “Gentleman in Union Suit Climbing a Telegraph Pole,” and so passed Fame by on the other side. The station reminded him for all the world of a flabby, disreputable redbird, squatting in the midst of an hilariously ragamuffin brood which sat back on its tails and derided her scurrilously. The progeny consisted of coal-sheds, warehouses, nondescript buildings where nothing was or apparently ever had been done, a feed-mill and a water-tank. All of them seemed to detest the perpendicular; most of them leered through doors squeezed to the shape of a clumsy diamond. Fire, thought Jim, would bring a merciful release to the whole of them. He alighted with all the pleasant anticipation of a Christian martyr about to dip into a caldron of boiling oil. No one was there to meet him, for no one knew he was coming. He didn’t know where to go and didn’t much care. All directions seemed equally unpromising. However, before plunging into the unknown he stopped in the shade of the building, mopped his forehead, and took an observation.