There are many other varieties, at least fifty-seven, and I've sampled fifty-six different sorts in nine hours.

Do you realize that it is just nine hours since I walked into the Central Hotel, and the orchestra struck up?
Good Lord! Nine hours! And do you remember, Curtis, I said as we came up the harbor that you would have a hell of a good time in New York?
Ha, ha! likewise ho, ho! A good time! Eating, fighting, marrying, plunging neck and crop out of one frantic revel into another.

Talk about delirium tremens, and its little green devils with little pink eyes--why, it's commonplace, that's what it is--a poor sort of pipe-dream compared with the reality of life in New York as seen in company with John Delancy Curtis, of Pekin." Devar was not by any means the first person in the city who had associated the name of the capital of China with some bizarre and elusive element of fantasy in connection with the man who gave "Pekin" as his address.

There was no explaining the conceit; it was just one of those whimsies which are alike plausible yet enigmatical.

Had Curtis described himself as being of London, or Paris, or even of Yokohama, no sense of mystery would have attached itself to his personality.