"I was a doctor by profession, carpenter by trade, stevedore by occupation; then came harder times--booze--more booze--despair, illness, and I found myself discharged from the hospital, down and out--a hobo! Yet tramp life is not so bad after all. I like it. I like the open-air existence, the freedom from care and responsibility, and--the hours. I am much alone, and genius, you know, grows corpulent in solitude. "My name is Tippett--Livingstone Tippett. Age, of no special moment. You know," he said pleasantly, "there are two things all of us lie about--our ages and our incomes. As this is a true story I will drop the _age_ question. It is better so. "My early life was uneventful. I was brought up by a pious mother in a quiet, deeply religious home; every influence uplifting and good-instilling. I was taught, among other things, to regard liquor in any form with abhorrence, and that drunkenness was the sin of sins. I was surrounded with every safeguard a loving mother could devise, and it was not until after her death and my wife's that I took to drink. My father and grandfather both died drunkards. Heredity, in my case, overcame both training and environment, and my troubles hurried on the inevitable. "I passed through college unscathed, studied medicine, walked the hospitals, and began the practice of my profession under the most favorable auspices. I fell in love with a charming girl, and blessed with my good mother's approval we were married. Our future seemed singularly bright and untroubled. Life is a game and I was considerably ahead of the game. I was certainly playing on velvet. "When my Elizabeth and I announced that instead of going abroad we would spend our honeymoon at 'Raven Hill' our little world thought it quite absurd. They were charitably inclined, however, and made excuses for us upon the ground that we were too much absorbed in each other to know what we were doing. But we did know, nevertheless. Our plans had been fully matured long before we saw fit to reveal them. To spend a month or so at Neville Mason's, down in Virginia, appealed very pleasantly to both of us, and I accepted my old chum's offer with avidity. We were to have everything to ourselves, with just as many servants as we wanted. "We were married. There was a wedding breakfast, flowers, weeping relatives, old shoes, and a profusion of rice; nothing, in short, was omitted. A few hours later we left Jersey City on the southbound flyer. Breaking the journey at Washington, and remaining over night there, we arrived at the tiny depot near our ultimate destination late on the evening of the following day. An ancient but still serviceable family carriage was in waiting, and we were conveyed in state to the mansion.