These visible signs of a slatternly kind of housekeeping seemed to multiply as I advanced, but my attention to them soon began to be somewhat distracted by my sense of smell. Mysterious and inscrutable odours, defying all my powers of analysis, emanated from these residences. From one it was like burnt rags, from another it seemed to be grease in some stage of decomposition, from another the odour was that of musty and decaying food, while from still others there proceeded an indescribable mixture of all these. More and more puzzled by the strange sights and smells to which my senses had grown more acute as I proceeded, I soon found that they were, after all, almost wholly driven from my mind by an infinitely sharper sense of the utter joylessness of the place. In spite of the hurrying crowds of men who jostled one another upon the streets, I began to be conscious of an overpowering sense of desolation such as I had never before known. An unaccountable gloom, which seemed to cover the whole town like a funeral pall, began to settle upon my hitherto buoyant spirits. It was as if the sun were not merely obscured by a passing cloud, but had been wholly withdrawn from the heavens, leaving the earth to be lighted only by some murky and baleful star. I recalled the fact that though many of the irregularities of apparel which I had noticed were in a high degree ludicrous, I had not seen the ghost of a smile upon the face or heard anything approaching a jest from the lips of a human being since I entered the town. I attempted to arouse myself and shake off the deadly chill that was beginning to envelope me, and as I did so I unconsciously muttered, “One would think it were the town of Hamelin from which the Pied Piper had just drawn away all the children.” No sooner had these words passed my lips than, like an electric shock, I remembered that I had not only not seen a child but I had not seen a woman since I entered the town. This dizzying fact was so astounding to me that I stopped in sheer and sudden fright and leaned against a tree near at hand in order to assure myself that it was true. Step by step, with minutest accuracy, I went over in my mind the ground which I had trodden. I recalled the anxious, hurrying figures of men, whose oddities of raiment no longer tempted me to smile, but not the face of a woman could I conjure up in the retrospect, nor even the glimpse of a woman’s garment. I had not, with a weakness which I think the angels forgive, turned on the streets to look after a woman’s beautiful figure. I surely had not seen a woman on those unswept doorsteps, I had not caught a glimpse of a woman in those dust-ridden parlours. Even the blooming faces and joyous, sparkling chatter of school-girls had been wholly absent from the streets which I had traversed.