"Good evening," we said simultaneously. He waved his pipe, a corn cob, towards the east. "New York!" he remarked, and we stood side by side for a moment in silence. The simple observation seemed to me to imply a susceptibility to the sublimity of the prospect that we had not discovered to any extent among our other neighbours. To them, apparently, New York was no more than London is to Hampstead; they had the suburban sentiment in an acute form. Nevertheless I was somewhat at a loss to continue our conversation. It seemed foolish to neglect such a heaven-directed opportunity to meet this man on his own ground and obtain some light upon his career. How should I begin? Should I say to him, "Look here, it is very nice, no doubt; but we, your neighbours, are simply crazy to know who and what you are?" That might strike him in various ways. He might take offence, and one could not blame him. He might see humour in it, and a proof of the contemptible meanness of human nature. I decided that I lacked courage to blurt out my desire that way. He was so very much like myself that I could not rid myself of the notion that he might prefer a milder way of approach. And as I sorted out my stock of diplomacy he spoke of the matter himself.
"You are a seaman, I understand?" I remarked. He gave me a quick glance.
"I go to sea," he replied, "if that is what you mean. Yes, in the legal phrase of the Board of Trade, I'm a seaman, and my number is Three nine five, eight nine three." He laughed shortly and continued to look out towards New York.
"A picturesque life," I hazarded, regretting my total ignorance of it. Again he looked at me and laughed.
"You think so?" he queried. "You think so?"
"I speak from book knowledge only," I said. "It is usually described in those terms." We began to walk to and fro.
"Well," he admitted unexpectedly, "and so it is. I don't doubt that to anyone just looking at it, you understand, it is as you say, 'picturesque,' But when you have a number like Three nine five, eight nine three, you have another view of it."
"You have been for a long voyage?"
"Oh no," he said; "Mediterranean and back, that's all."
I began to realize something of the man from this. I had no knowledge of the sea, but I certainly had a mind trained by years of observation and reflection to deduce certain definite data affecting human nature. And I realized dimly that a man who regarded a run round the Mediterranean and back across the Atlantic as a trivial episode scarcely worthy of mention, might have views on literature and art radically at variance with my own.