“Here you are! Insufficient address. November 1. Queenstown letter—‘Linwood, to John McLaughlin. Try Dorchester. Try Roxbury. Try East Boston. Try Somerville’—and there it stops, and was not returned.”
“Try Somerville!”
In these words great light fell over the eager circle. Not because Somerville is the seat of an insane hospital. No! But because it is not in the Boston Directory.
If you please, Somerville is an independent city, and so, unless John McLaughlin worked in Boston, if he lived in Somerville, he would not be in the Boston Directory.
Not much! Somerville has its own seven John McLaughlins besides those Boston ones.
“I say, Harry, Tom, Dick—somebody fetch Somerville Directory!”
Dick flew and returned with the book.
“Here you be! ‘John McLaughlin, laborer, 99 Linwood Street!’”
“Victory!”
Satan’s forces tremble, and as the different officers return to their desks “even the ranks of Tuscany” in that well-bred office “can scarce forbear to cheer.”