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That night we slept soundly. A fine wind sprang up, and when morning came we were scurrying home over a thrashing sea. We raced past Sandy Hook and put up the bay. By eight o’clock we were at the Narrows, with the Battery in sight. The harbor looked like a city of masts. After the lonely sea it seemed alive with a multitude of craft. Tugs went puffing by. Scows and steamers mingled. Amid so much life the sea seemed safe.

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Whenever I think of them I think of the spectacle that genius of the burlesque world of my day, Nat Wills, used to present when, in fluttering rags and tatters, his vestless shirt open at the breast, revealing no underwear, his shoes three times too big, and torn and cracked, a small battered straw hat, from a hole in which his hair protruded, his trousers upheld by a string, and that indefinable smirk of satisfaction of which he was capable flickering over his dirty and unshaven face he was wont to strike an attitude worthy of a flight of oratory, and exclaim: “Fifteen years ago to-day I was a poor, dispirited, broken-down tramp sitting on a bench in a park, not a shirt to my back. Not a decent pair of shoes on my feet. A hat with a hole in it. No money to get a shave or a bath or a place to sleep. No place to eat. Not a friend in the world to turn to. My torn and frayed trousers held up by a string. Yet” (striking his chest dramatically) “look at me now!” And then he would lift one hand dramatically, as much as to say, “Could any change be greater?”