Of DIRTY STORIES

Of Dirty Stories
Once upon a time, the dirty story had its
proper place and stayed there.
Foul-mouthed sailors stepped back on land
from their galleys and crude sailing craft.
Their legs were stiff from long months at
sea. Their minds were dull with the
monotony of a voyage of uncounted days.
And with their pay recklessly displayed in
their dirty fists, they scampered along the
waterfront for the dives that were their
immediate objectives.
And the dives and the human vermin that
infested them welcomed the returned travelers
gladly. There they settled down in a
gloom that was part bad lighting, part the
effluvium of bad breaths, part the stench of
unwashed bodies and unwholesome liquor,
part that dark, heavy atmosphere in which
vice hides and most easily spawns.
From the Depths
Whether the port was Carthage at its
prime or a town of Phoenicia when the
Phoenician triremes swept the known seas
from Africa. up to Britain, or any of the
hundred little sea-coast towns of the Isles
of Greece, or Ostia, near Rome, the sailors
knew that no law held them and no convention
or commandment was theirs to obey.
So, among the lowest denizens of the
waterfront, the dock rats of the day, these
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