If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows, it is equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one into undreamed-of localities.  I had never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year.  I do not think I would, of my own volition, have selected Greenton for a fortnight’s sojourn at any time; but now the business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me the guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel’s Son.

It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners.  Though the ten miles’ ride from K——­ had been depressing, especially the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn round in the road and roll off in the darkness.  There were no lights visible anywhere, and only for the big, shapeless mass of something in front of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I should have fancied that I had been set down by the roadside.  I was wet to the skin and in no amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side of the house with my heavy walking-stick.  In a minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere aloft, then I heard the sound of a window opening, followed by an exclamation of disgust as a blast of wind extinguished the candle which had given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette of a man leaning out of a casement.

“I say, what do you want, down there?” inquired an unprepossessing voice.

“I want to come in; I want a supper, and a bed, and numberless things.”

“This isn’t no time of night to go rousing honest folks out of their sleep.  Who are you, anyway?”

The question, superficially considered, was a very simple one, and I, of all people in the world, ought to have been able to answer it off-hand; but it staggered me.  Strangely enough, there came drifting across my memory the lettering on the back of a metaphysical work which I had seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library.  Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collocation of title and author, the lettering read as follows:—­“Who am I?  Jones.”  Evidently it had puzzled Jones to know who he was, or he wouldn’t have written a book about it, and come to so lame and impotent a conclusion.  It certainly puzzled me at that instant to define my identity.  “Thirty years ago,” I reflected, “I was nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing again, humanly speaking.  In the mean time, who am I, sure enough?” It had never before occurred to me what an indefinite article I was.  I wish it had not occurred to me then.  Standing there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with the problem, and was constrained to fall back upon a Yankee expedient.