Desolate flotasm

Godawful purple prose you got there . . . the author thinks too highly or him or herself, and too little of the reader.

Flotsam is a term for the parts of a ship or of its cargo which is washed overboard in a storm, or comes to the surface after it sinks. The sentence means that there are some odds and ends, some personal possessions left behind when the former tenants moved somewhere else. The phrase (badly tied to the preceding phrase) "when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port" means that the former tenants of the room enjoyed some good fortune which allowed them to move elsehwere. "A lucky sail" is an attempt at using a nautical-sounding expression (an attempt which fails miserably) which will tie it into the use of the expression "desolate flotsam."

Taken all in all, that's some damned poor writing.

set, you mean it's not the winning entry from an Ernest Hemingway imitation contest?

Good point, Yit, it would certainly qualify for that . . .

I'm no great fan of Hemmingway or his prose style, but he used deceptively simple sentences and avoided Latinate diction.

The author of the example was obviously of the "'It was a dark and stormy night...." Bulwer-Lytton. school of fiction crafting.

The winners of the 2002 BL Write-Alike Contest:

http://www.literature-awards.com/bulwe_lytton_winners_2002.htm

That is The Furnished Room, by O Henry. I think Vermont has found himself and O Henry reader of some sort as this is at least the second such reference.

yes, the passage is rather frilly, now that you mention it, but it did have all those nautical bits, and the reference to the Amazon might evoke the sense of rugged adventure in exotic locales Mr. Hemingway was identified with. ;-)

As I recall, "The Furnished Room" was the only supernatural short story that O'Henry ever wrote. Don't recall that particular passage, however.

Valpower, how did you know that?