Can most travelers, I wonder, enjoy as I do a solitary walk, by night,
through the mysterious streets of a strange city? Do they feel the same
detached yet keen interest in unfamiliar highways, homes, and human
beings, the same sense of being a wanderer from another world, a
"messenger from Mars," a Harun-al-Rashid, or, if not one of these, an
imaginative adventurer like Tartarin? Do they thrill at the sight of an
ill-lighted street leading into a no-man's-land of menacing dark
shadows; at the promise of a glowing window puncturing the blackness
here or there; at the invitation of some open doorway behind which
unilluminated blackness hangs, threatening and tempting? Do they rejoice
in streets the names of which they have not heard before? Do they--as I
do--delight in irregularity: in the curious forms of roofs and spires
against the sky; in streets which run up hill or down; or which, instead
of being straight, have jogs in them, or curves, or interesting
intersections, at which other streets dart off from them obliquely, as
though in a great hurry to get somewhere? Do they love to emerge from a
street which is narrow, dim, and deserted, upon one which is wide,
bright, and crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant street
and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of
lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they
tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to
board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of
the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere
with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where
these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the
trail lead to a prize fight, to a church sociable, to a fire, to a
fashionable ball, or to the ends of the world?
For the traveler who does not know such sensations and such impulses as
these--who has not at times indulged in the joy of yielding to an
inclination of at least mildly fantastic character--I am profoundly
sorry.
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