[Illustration] THE DECADENT: BEING THE GOSPEL OF INACTION: WHEREIN ARE SET FORTH IN ROMANCE FORM CERTAIN REFLECTIONS TOUCHING THE CURIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE ULTIMATE YEARS, AND THE DIVERS CAUSES THEREOF. [Illustration] PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR MDCCCXCIII TIBI · MEO · CARO · B · G · G · CVIVS · LABORIBVS · PRETIVM · NON · PROPRIVM · EI · FIEBAT· OPERA · TVA · EXARCHO · FRATRIBVSQVE · EIVS · ORDINIS · QVAE · SVMNIA · SIBI · FINGIT · DENIQVE · OMNIBVS · DELECTIS · PER · ORBEM · TERRARVM · HVNC · LIBRVM · GRATE · DICO · THE DECADENT. I. The 3.20 train from Boston slowed up as it drew into a way station, and Malcolm McCann, grim and sullen from his weary ride in the dirt and cinders, the coal-smoke and the foetid air, the fretting babies and hot, worrying men, that characterise a railway journey in August, hurried out with a grunt of relief. It was not a pretty station where he found himself, and he glared ill-naturedly around with restless, aggressive eyes. The brick walls, the cheaply grained doors bearing their tarnished legends, "Gents," "Ladies," "Refreshment Saloon," the rough raftered roof over the tracks,--everything was black and grimy with years of smoke, belching even now from the big locomotive, and gathering like an ill-conditioned thunder-cloud over the mob of scurrying, pushing men and women, a mob that swelled and scattered constantly in fretful confusion. A hustling business-man with a fat, pink face and long sandy whiskers, his silk hat cocked on one side in grotesque assumption of jauntiness, tripped over the clay-covered pick of a surly labourer, red of face and sweaty, blue of overalls and mud-coloured of shirt, and as he stumbled over the annoying implement scowled coarsely, and swore, with his cigar between his teeth. Ragged and grimy children, hardly old enough to walk, sprawled and scrambled on the dirty platform, and as McCann hurried by, a five-year old cursed shrilly a still more youthful little tough, who answered in kind. Vulgar theatre-bills in rank reds and yellows flaunted on the cindery walls; discarded newspapers, banana-skins, cigar-butts, and saliva were ground together vilely under foot by the scuffling mob. Dirt, meanness, ugliness everywhere,--in the unhappy people no less than in their surroundings.