He had extravagant fancies. There might be a world in which there were new and marvellous cities. He went along imagining such cities. For one thing the doors to all the houses were wide open. Everything was clean and neat. The sills to the doors of the houses had been washed. He walked into one of the houses. Well, the people had gone out, but on the chance some such fellow as himself would wander in they had set out a little feast on a table in one of the rooms down stairs. There was a loaf of white bread with a carving-knife lying beside it so that one could cut off slices, cold meats, little squares of cheese, a decanter of wine.

He sat alone at the table to eat, feeling very happy, and after his hunger had been satisfied carefully brushed away the crumbs and fixed everything nicely. Some other fellow might come along later and wander into the same house.

The fancies young Webster had during that period of his life filled him with delight. Sometimes he stopped in his night walks along dark residence streets and stood looking up at the sky and laughing.

There he was in a world of fancies, in a place of dreams. His mind plunged him back into the house he had visited in his dreamworld. What curiosity there was in him in regard to the people who lived there. It was night, but the place was lighted. There were little lamps one could pick up and carry about. There was a city, wherein each house was a feasting place and this was one of the houses and in its sweet depths things other than the belly could be fed.

One went through the house feeding all the senses. The walls had been painted with strong colours that had now faded and become soft and mellow with age. The time had passed in America when people continually built new houses. They built houses strongly and then stayed in them, beautified them slowly and with a sure touch. One would perhaps rather be in such a house in the day-time when the owners were at home, but it was fine to be there alone and at night too.

The lamp held above one's head threw dancing shadows on the walls. One went up a stairway into bedrooms, wandered in halls, came down the stairs again, and putting the lamp back into its place passed out at the open front door.

How sweet to linger on the front steps for a moment, having more dreams. What of the people who lived in the house? In one of the bedrooms up stairs he had fancied he knew that a young woman slept. Had she been in the bed and asleep when he came into the house and wandered about and had he walked in on her, what would have happened?

Might there be in the world, well, one might as well say in some world of the fancy perhaps it would take too much time for an actual people to create such a world but might there not be a people, in the world of one's fancy, a people who had really developed the senses, people who really smelled, saw, tasted, felt things with their fingers, heard things with their ears? One could dream of such a world. It was early evening and for several hours one did not have to go back to the little dirty town hotel.