"In the Old Sun, the "Sun" is a scruffy former tavern now employed as a poorhouse, where idlers sit around, living their past lives in the imagination. The narrator then turns to the earlier life of a man of talent and energy who falls victim to drink and is employed as the manager of the "Sun," who then begins to engage, sometimes quarrelsomely, with the other inmates, giving an opportunity for smaller stories within the story, some humorous, some sad. The men grate on one another, but they mourn as they die off"--