Just at the beginning of Meigg’s Wharf there was a house of entertainment that no doubt had a history and a mystery even in those young days.  We never quite comprehended it:  we were too young for that, and too shy and too well-bred to make curious or impertinent inquiry.  We sometimes stood at the wide doorway—­it was forever invitingly open, —­and looked with awe and amazement at paintings richly framed and hung so close together that no bit of the wall was visible.  There was a bar at the farther end of the long room,—­there was always a bar somewhere in those days; and there were cages filled with strange birds and beasts,—­as any one might know with his eyes shut, for the odor of it all was repelling.

The strangest feature of that most strange hostelry was the amazing wealth of cobwebs that mantled it.  Cobwebs as dense as crape waved in dusty rags from the ceiling; they veiled the pictures and festooned the picture-frames, that shone dimly through them.  Not one of these cobwebs was ever molested—­or had been from the beginning of time, as it seemed to us.  A velvet carpet on the floor was worn smooth and almost no trace of its rich flowery pattern was left; but there were many square boxes filled with sand or sawdust and reeking with cigar stumps and tobacco juice.  Need I add that some of those pictures were such as our young and innocent eyes ought never to have been laid on?  Nor were they fit for the eyes of others.

There was something uncanny about that house.  We never knew just what it was, but we had a faint idea that the proprietor’s wife or daughter was a witch; and that she, being as cobwebby as the rest of its furnishings, was never visible.  The wharf in front of the house was a free menagerie.  There were bears and other beasts behind prison bars, a very populous monkey cage, and the customary “happy family” looking as dreadfully bored as usual.  Then again there were whole rows of parrots and cockatoos and macaws as splendid as rainbow tints could make them, and with tails a yard long at least.

From this bewildering pageant it was but a step to the beach below.  Indeed the water at high tide flowed under that house with much foam and fury; for it was a house founded upon the sand, and it long since toppled to its fall, as all such houses must.  We followed the beach, that rounded in a curve toward Black Point.  Just before reaching the Point there was a sandhill of no mean proportions; this, of course, we climbed with pain, only to slide down with perspiration.  It was our Alp, and we ascended and descended it with a flood of emotion not unmixed with sand.