noon
It was an uninspiring bit of street : narrow , paved with cobble ; hot and noisy in summer , reeking with unwholesome mud during the drizzling and snow-slimed months of winter . It looked anything this May after noon except a starting-place for drama . But , then , the great dramas of life often avoid the splendid estates and trappings with which conventional romance would equip them , and have their beginnings in unlikeliest environment ; and thence sweep on to a noble , consuming tragedy , or to a glorious unfolding of souls . Life is a composite of contradictions -- a puzzle to the wisest of us : the lily lifting its graceful purity aloft may have its roots in a dunghill . Samson 's dead lion putrefying by a roadside is ever and again being found to be a storehouse of wild honey .