A SEPTEMBER CHILL 



same melancholy that the sun had painted in oil 

 was now washed in with water. I even felt chilly, 

 although my thermometer said persistently that 

 I was mistaken. I came in and smoked so many 

 cigars that Charlie began to cough in his sleep, 

 and then I threw the door and window open, and 

 the night air struck me with a sharp shudder. 



Finally I went to bed, and then set in an inter 

 minable tangle of dreams, crowded with human 

 beings. I was with my old companions. We 

 seemed to be going the rounds of well-remem 

 bered scenes of revelry. Theatres, concert saloons, 

 men and women in endless processions of fan 

 tastic sportiveness, coming and going, with vast 

 audiences, uneasy, oppressed, as if by a mysteri 

 ous presence, and looking at me askance as if I 

 had violated some inexorable law in coming back. 

 I had been away for a thousand years, and the 

 revelry all took on the melancholy of the sunset. 

 But what, more than anything else, excited my 

 astonishment in this hurrying phantasmagoria 

 was the curious pulsing rhythm of it. It all 

 expanded and shrank regularly, and everybody 

 spoke and acted as if keeping time to the beat of 

 a drum. Even the spectators vibrated with a 

 horrible systole and diastole. It puzzled and 

 pained me, and when I asked for an explanation, 

 somebody told me that I was the cause of it 

 all, and should not be permitted to go at large. 

 Even this explanation came in strange pulses, 

 as if one should speak in throbs. As I became 

 aware that this rhythmic impulse proceeded from 



