Part 1 (1/2)

The Day of Days

by Louis Joseph Vance

I

THE DUB

”Smell,” P Sybarite mused aloud

For an instant he was silent in depression Then with extraordinary vehenant-sepulchral- sempiternally-sticky-Smell!”

He paused for both breath and words--pondered with bended head, knitting his brows forbiddingly

”Supremely squalid, sinisterly sebaceous, sombrely sociable Smell!” he pursued violently

Moitive as the favour of princes

Vindictively charoped for expression: ”Stygiansickeningsurfeitingslovenly

sour”

He shook his head iic hand

”_Stench!_” he perorated in a voice tremulous with emotion

Even that comprehensive monosyllable was far from satisfactory

”Oh, what's the use?” P Sybarite despaired

Alliteration could no ue itself seemed poverty-stricken, his native wit inadequate With decent meekness he owned himself unfit for the task to which he had set hiroaned--”a poor, God-forsaken, preent dub!”

For ten interminable years the aspiration to do justice to the Genius of the Place had smouldered in his humble bosom; to-day for the first time he had attempted to formulate a meet apostrophe to that God of his Forlorn Destiny; and now he chewed the bitter cud of realisation that all his eloquence had proved hopelessly poor and la

Perched on the polished seat of a very tall stool, his slender legs fraternising with its legs in apparently inextricable inti into the nicked and ink-stained bed of a counting-house desk; chin soer, hair ruloomed

On this the eve of his thirty-second birthday and likewise the tenth anniversary of his servitude, the appearance of P Sybarite was elaborately norhtly from one year's-end to the other

His occupation had fitted his head and shoulders with a deceptive but none the less perennial stoop His le outworn suit of ready- sensitively on each successive application of the tailor's sizzling goose, had co candour--sleeves too short, trousers at once too short and too narroaistcoat buttons straining over his chest, coat buttons refusing to recognise a buttonhole save that at the waist Circue, lending him the semblance of maturity attained while still in the shell of youth

The ruddy brown hair thatching his well-, friendly blue eyes and e; and his hands which, though thin and clouded with sraceful (like the slender feet in his shabby shoes) bore out the suggestion with an added hint of gentle blood

But whatever his antecedents, the fact is indisputable that P

Sybarite, just then, was most miserable, and not without cause; for the Genius of the Place held his soul in Its -rooham & Wimper, _Hides & Skins_; and the Genius of it was the reek of hides both raw and dressed--an effluvium incomparable, a passionate individualist of an odour, as rich as the iination of an editor of Sunday supplements, as rare as a reticent author, as friendly as a stray puppy

For ten endless years the body and soul of P Sybarite had been thrall to that Smell; for a complete decade he had inhaled it continuously nine hours each day, six days each week--and had felt lonesome without it on every seventh day