“Don’t do that!” he urged.  “There’s a nice French restaurant in this town.  I can’t think of the name of it.  Let’s go there.”

“Well, how can we go if you don’t know what place it is?” I asked, intending to be discouraging.

The young man looked dazed at this.  Then his face brightened suddenly.

“Oh, yes!” he cried.  “I remember the name now!  It’s the Louisiane!  Come on!  Let’s get our coats an’ go there!”

“But,” I said, “this is the Louisiane right here.”

The thought seemed to stagger him, for he swayed ever so slightly.

“All right,” he said, regarding me with great solemnity.  “Let’s go there!”

* * * * *

I have wondered since if this same young man may not have been the one who, returning to the St. Charles Hotel in the early hours of that sad Ash Wednesday morning, was asked by the clerk, who gave him his key, whether he wished to leave a call.

“What day’s this?” he inquired.

“Wednesday,” said the clerk.

“All ri’,” replied the other, moving toward the elevator.  “Call me Saturday.”

CHAPTER LX

FINALE

    Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and day
    The old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;
    And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,
    You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and
        the sky!

    —­GERALD GOULD.

It is good to look about the world; but always there comes a time when the restless creature, man, having yielded to the call of the seas and the stars and the sky, and gone a-journeying, begins to think of home again.  Even were home a less satisfactory, a less happy place than it is, he would be bound to think of it after so long a journey as that upon which my companion and I had spent so many months.  For, just as it is necessary for a locomotive to go every so often for an overhauling, so it is necessary for the traveler to return to headquarters.  The fastenings of his wardrobe trunk are getting loose, and the side of it has been stove in; his heels are running down in back, his watch needs regulating, his umbrella-handle is coming loose, he is running out of notebooks and pencils and has broken a blade of his knife in trying to open a bottle with it (because he left his corkscrew in a hotel somewhere along the way).  His fountain pen has sprung a leak and spoiled a waistcoat, his razors are dull, his strop is nicked, and he has run out of the kind of cigarettes and cigars he likes.  One lens of his spectacles has gotten scratched, his mail has ceased to reach him, his light suits are spotted, baggy and worn, and his winter suits are becoming too heavy for comfort as the spring advances.  His neckties are getting stringy, he has hangnails and a cough; he never could fix his own hangnails,