On Friday evening, September the eighth, 1939, Mr. Henry Gamadge sat beside his open library window, doing several things at once. His left forefinger gently caressed a yellowed fragment of paper on which was scrawled a rusty signature; his eyes wandered from it to the big ailanthus tree outside the window, and his right hand conveyed spoonfuls of cantaloupe to his mouth. War news poured confidentially into his ear from a little radio beside him, turned low; a smell of freshly watered plants on the balcony, and of grass and shrubs in the yard beneath, came to him with the warm southerly breeze; which also brought him a murmur of subdued traffic, and the strains of Norma, played on a street organ. All his senses being occupied, Mr. Gamadge was (except for the war news) reasonably happy.