managed the hotel of course knew nothing at all; they were not even interested, though he had lived there for years. In short, he lived and moved and had his being in want and thinness, and finally died--leaving what? His effects, as I was informed afterwards by the attendants of the “hotel” which had housed him for years, consisted of a small parcel of clothes, worthless to any save himself, and a box of scribbled notes, relating to what no one ever knew. They were disjointed and meaningless scraps of information, I was told, and dumped out with the ashes after his demise. What, think you, could have been his import to the world, his message? * * * * * And then Samuel Clampitt--or so a hand-lettered scrawl over his gate read--who maintained a junk-yard near the Harlem River and One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street. He was a little man, very dark, very hunched at the shoulders, with iron-gray hair, heavy, bushy, black eyebrows, a very dark and seamy skin, and hands that were quite like claws. He bought and sold--or pretended to--old bottles, tin, iron, rags, and the like. His place was a small yard or space of ground lying next to a coal-yard and adjoining the river, and about this he had built, or had found there, a high board fence. And within, whenever the gates were opened and one was permitted to look in, were collections of junk about as above tabulated, with, in addition, some bits of iron fencing, old window-frames, part of stair railings, gasoliers and the like. He himself was rarely to be seen; I saw him no more than four or five times during a period of three years in which I passed his yard daily. But, having occasion once to dispose of a collection of waste rags and clothing, I eventually sought him out and found him, after trying his gate on an average of once every two days during a period of two weeks and more. The thing that interested me from the first was that my tentative knockings at his gate, which was always closed and very high, were greeted by savage roars from several Great Danes that were far within and that pawed the high gate whenever I touched it or knocked. Yet eventually I did find him, the gate being open and the dogs chained and he inside. He was sitting in a dark corner of his little hut inside the yard, no window or door giving onto the street, and eating from a discolored tin pan on his lap which held a little bread, a tomato and some sausage. The thing that interested me most (apart from the fact that he appeared to me more of a gnome than a man) was these same dogs, now chained to a post a score of feet from me and most savagely snarling and charging as I talked. They were so savage and showed such great, white, glistening teeth that I was eager to retreat without waiting to complete my errand. However, I managed to explain my purpose--but to no result. He was not interested in my collection of junk, saying that he only bought material that was brought to him.