Physician and author S. Weir Mitchell brings us a short collection of stories of the human condition. Through diverse settings as the mystical Arabian desert to a lonely park bench, from a jocular sea port to a dusty library packed with archaic tomes written in foreign tongues, S. Weir Mitchell shows us what it means to live as others live. Through hauntings both literal and metaphorical, through desperate acts and moral dilemmas, we are shown through these slight sketches that life is as complicated or simple as we choose to make it.