In Cranston,
where the young people "grew up together," and where he met a dozen
friends on the street in a half-hour's walk, he often said that he
"liked to be alone with himself." London, after his first excitement in
merely being there, taught him his mistake, chilled him with weeks of
forbidding weather, puzzled and troubled him.
He was on his way to Paris when (as he recorded in his journal) a light
came into his life. This illumination first shone for him by means of
one Cooley, son and inheritor of all that had belonged to the late great
Cooley, of Cooley Mills, Connecticut. Young Cooley, a person of
cheery manners and bright waistcoats, was one of Mellin's few
sea-acquaintances; they had played shuffleboard together on the steamer
during odd half-hours when Mr. Cooley found it possible to absent
himself from poker in the smoking-room; and they encountered each other
again on the channel boat crossing to Calais.
_"Hey!"_ was Mr. Cooley's lively greeting. "I'm meetin' lots of people
I know to-day. You runnin' over to Paris, too? Come up to the boat-deck
and meet the Countess de Vaurigard.
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