The first of these incidents brought me in acquaintance with a certain San Francisco character, who had something of a name beyond the limits of the city, and was known to many lovers of good English. I had discovered a new slum, a place of precarious sandy cliffs, deep sandy cuttings, solitary ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets. It was already environed. The ranks of the street lamps threaded it unbroken. The city, upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept away; but it offered then, within narrow limits, a delightful peace, and (in the morning, when I chiefly went there) a seclusion almost rural. On a steep sand-hill in this neighbourhood toppled, on the most insecure foundation, a certain row of houses, each with a bit of garden, and all (I have to presume) inhabited. Thither I used to mount by a crumbling footpath, and in front of the last of the houses would sit down to sketch. The very first day I saw I was observed out of the ground-floor window by a youngish, good-looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with an expression both lively and engaging. The second, as we were still the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than natural that we should nod. The third he came out fairly from his entrenchments, praised my sketch, and with the _impromptu_ cordiality of artists carried me into his apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a museum of strange objects--paddles, and battle-clubs, and baskets, rough-hewn stone images, ornaments of threaded shell, cocoa-nut bowls, snowy cocoa-nut plumes--evidences and examples of another earth, another climate, another race, and another (if a ruder) culture. Nor did these objects lack a fitting commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance. Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how he tramped and starved, and had so fine a profit of living in his days among the islands; and meeting him as I did, one artist with another, after months of offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he would speak, and with what pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks, which we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the names--first fell under the spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first of them that I returned (a happy man) with "Omoo" under one arm, and my friend's own adventures under the other.