“They told me,” he said, in a hopeless way, “that he lived on this street, and I’ve been to every other house.  I’m very anxious to find him, Cap’n,”—­the contributor, of course, had no claim to the title with which he was thus decorated,—­“for I’ve a daughter living with him, and I want to see her; I’ve just got home from a two years’ voyage, and”—­there was a struggle of the Adam’s-apple in the man’s gaunt throat—­“I find she’s about all there is left of my family.”

How complex is every human motive!  This contributor had been lately thinking, whenever he turned the pages of some foolish traveller,—­some empty prattler of Southern or Eastern lands, where all sensation was long ago exhausted, and the oxygen has perished from every sentiment, so has it been breathed and breathed again,—­that nowadays the wise adventurer sat down beside his own register and waited for incidents to seek him out.  It seemed to him that the cultivation of a patient and receptive spirit was the sole condition needed to insure the occurrence of all manner of surprising facts within the range of one’s own personal knowledge; that not only the Greeks were at our doors, but the fairies and the genii, and all the people of romance, who had but to be hospitably treated in order to develop the deepest interest of fiction, and to become the characters of plots so ingenious that the most cunning invention were poor beside them.  I myself am not so confident of this, and would rather trust Mr. Charles Reade, say, for my amusement than any chance combination of events.  But I should be afraid to say how much his pride in the character of the stranger’s sorrows, as proof of the correctness of his theory, prevailed with the contributor to ask him to come in and sit down; though I hope that some abstract impulse of humanity, some compassionate and unselfish care for the man’s misfortunes as misfortunes, was not wholly wanting.  Indeed, the helpless simplicity with which he had confided his case might have touched a harder heart.  “Thank you,” said the poor fellow, after a moment’s hesitation.  “I believe I will come in.  I’ve been on foot all day, and after such a long voyage it makes a man dreadfully sore to walk about so much.  Perhaps you can think of a Mr. Hapford living somewhere in the neighborhood.”

He sat down, and, after a pondering silence, in which he had remained with his head fallen upon his breast, “My name is Jonathan Tinker,” he said, with the unaffected air which had already impressed the contributor, and as if he felt that some form of introduction was necessary, “and the girl that I want to find is Julia Tinker.”  Then he added, resuming the eventful personal history which the listener exulted, while he regretted, to hear:  “You see, I shipped first to Liverpool, and there I heard from my family; and then I shipped again for Hong-Kong, and after that I never heard a word:  I seemed to miss the letters everywhere.  This morning, at four o’clock, I left my ship as