When I returned again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea.

Here was I sat down, full of Love and Respect to write my dearest Friends a dutiful and loving letter, when lo, and behold! I was made happy by the receipt of yours.

With its barred windows and fading paper signs announcing the various forms of its artery cloggers du jour, it couldn't by any stretch be called inviting.

Indeed, he uses his reportorial talent for description to conjure the glum, shopworn world they inhabit: he notices the linoleum curling at its seams, the fake antique furniture “broken out in pediments and lathework grenades and ornamental buboes,” the old sewing machine “whose plastic had gone yellow.”