familiar as the rainbow which follows a storm, it is as proper that a fog should spread upon the waters as that steam shall rise from a kettle.  But a fog which springs from the paved streets, that rolls between solid house-fronts, that forces cabs to move at half speed, that drowns policemen and extinguishes the electric lights of the music-hall, that to me is incomprehensible.  It is as out of place as a tidal wave on Broadway.

“As I felt my way along the wall, I encountered other men who were coming from the opposite direction, and each time when we hailed each other I stepped away from the wall to make room for them to pass.  But the third time I did this, when I reached out my hand, the wall had disappeared, and the further I moved to find it the further I seemed to be sinking into space.  I had the unpleasant conviction that at any moment I might step over a precipice.  Since I had set out, I had heard no traffic in the street, and now, although I listened some minutes, I could only distinguish the occasional footfalls of pedestrians.  Several times I called aloud, and once a jocular gentleman answered me, but only to ask me where I thought he was, and then even he was swallowed up in the silence.  Just above me I could make out a jet of gas which I guessed came from a street-lamp, and I moved over to that, and, while I tried to recover my bearings, kept my hand on the iron post.  Except for this nicker of gas, no larger than the tip of my finger, I could distinguish nothing about me.  For the rest, the mist hung between me and the world like a damp and heavy blanket.

“I could hear voices, but I could not tell from whence they came, and the scrape of a foot, moving cautiously, or a muffled cry as someone stumbled, were the only sounds that reached me.

“I decided that until someone took me in I had best remain where I was, and it must have been for ten minutes that I waited by the lamp, straining my ears and hailing distant footfalls.  In a house near me some people were dancing to the music of a Hungarian band.  I even fancied I could hear the windows shake to the rhythm of their feet, but I could not make out from which part of the compass the sounds came.  And sometimes, as the music rose, it seemed close at my hand, and, again, to be floating high in the air above my head.  Although I was surrounded by thousands of householders, I was as completely lost as though I had been set down by night in the Sahara Desert.  There seemed to be no reason in waiting longer for an escort, so I again set out, and at once bumped against a low, iron fence.  At first I believed this to be an area railing, but, on following it, I found that it stretched for a long distance, and that it was pierced at regular intervals with gates.  I was standing, uncertainly, with my hand on one of these, when a square of light suddenly opened in the night, and in it I saw, as you see a picture thrown by a biograph in a darkened theatre, a young