It was a fine October evening when I was sitting on the back stoop ofhis cheerful little bachelor's establishment in Mercer street, with myold friend and comrade, Henry Archer. Many a frown of fortune had we twoweathered out together; in many of her brightest smiles had we tworeveled--never was there a stauncher friend, a merrier companion, akeener sportsman, or a better fellow, than this said Harry; and here hadwe two met, three thousand miles from home, after almost ten years ofseparation, just the same careless, happy, dare-all do-no-goods that wewere when we parted in St. James's street,--he for the West, I for theEastern World--he to fell trees, and build log huts in the backwoods ofCanada,--I to shoot tigers and drink arrack punch in the Carnatic. Theworld had wagged with us as with most others: now up, now down, and laidus to, at last, far enough from the goal for which we started--so that,as I have said already, on landing in New York, having heard nothing ofhim for ten years, whom the deuce should I tumble on but that sameworthy, snugly housed, with a neat bachelor's menage, and every thingship-shape about him?--So, in the natural course of things, we were atonce inseparables. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.