IMB^W 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
uornvii uniwrsiiy kiui ai y 
 
 PS 3531.A29V2 
 
 The van dwellers:a strenuous quest for a 
 
 3 1924 021 655 356 
 
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 Olin/Kroch Library 
 
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"WELL, AND WHEN DID YEZ OEDER IT TURNED ON?" 
 
 — Fiontispiece. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
The VAN 
 DWELLERS 
 
 J? Strej^uous Quest 
 FOR A HOME 
 
 ALBERT BIGELOAV PAINE 
 AutKor of "THE BREAD LINE" 
 
 " We were strangers and they took us in " 
 
 N E W^ Y O R R. 
 
 J. r. TAYLOR & COMPANY 
 
 1 9 O 1 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
COPVHIQHT. 1901 
 BY 
 
 J. F. TAYLOR & C0MPAN1 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
TO THOSE 
 
 Who Have Lived In Flats 
 
 TO THOSE 
 
 Who Are Living In Flats 
 
 and to those 
 
 Who Are Thinking of 
 
 Living In Flats 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Contents. 
 
 I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The First Home in the Metropolis i 
 
 II. 
 Metropolitan Begii^nings 13 
 
 III. 
 Learning by Experience 28 
 
 IV. 
 Our First Move 45 
 
 V. 
 A Boarding House for a Change 60 
 
 VI. 
 Pursuing the Ideal 72 
 
 ' VII. 
 
 Owed to the Moving Man 86 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Household Retainers 88 
 
 IX. 
 
 Ann 104 
 
 iii 
 
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iv Contents. 
 
 X. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A " Flat " Failure 114 
 
 XI. 
 Inheritance and Mania 133 
 
 XII. 
 Gilded Affluence 153 
 
 XIII. 
 A Home at Last 177 
 
 XIV. 
 Closing Remarks 183 
 
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THE FAN 
 DWELLERS 
 
 I. 
 
 TTie First Home in the 
 Metropolis. 
 
 WB had never lived in New 
 York. This fact will de- 
 velop anyway, as I proceed, 
 but somehow it seems fairer to 
 everybody to state it in the first 
 sentence and have it over with. 
 
 Still, we had heard of flats in a 
 vague way, and as we drew near 
 the Metropolis the Little Woman 
 bought papers of the train boy 
 and began to read advertisements 
 under the head of " Flats and Apart- 
 ments to Let." 
 
 I 
 
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The Van "Dwellers. 
 
 I remember tliat we wondered 
 tlien what was the difference. Now, 
 having tried both, we are wiser. 
 The difference ranges from three 
 hundred dollars a year up. There 
 are also minor details, such as palms 
 in the vestibule, exposed plumbing, 
 and uniformed hall service — per- 
 haps an elevator, but these things 
 are immaterial. The price is the 
 difference. 
 
 We bought papers, as I have said. 
 It was the beginning of our down- 
 fall, and the first step was easy — 
 even alluring. We compared prices 
 and descriptions and put down ad- 
 dresses. The descriptions were all 
 that could be desired and the prices 
 absurdly modest. We had heard 
 that living in the city was ex- 
 pensive ; now we put down the street 
 and number of " four large light 
 rooms and improvements, $18.00," 
 and were properly indignant at 
 
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The First Home. 3 
 
 those wlio had libeled the landlords 
 of Gotham. 
 
 Next morning we stumbled up 
 four dim flights of stairs, groped 
 through a black passage-way and 
 sidled out into a succession of 
 gloomy closets, wondering what 
 they were for. Our conductor 
 stopped and turned. 
 
 " This is it," he announced. 
 " All nice light rooms, and im- 
 provements." 
 
 It was our first meeting with 
 a flat. Also, with a janitor. The 
 Little Woman was first to speak. 
 
 " Ah, yes, would you mind tell- 
 ing us — we're from the West, you 
 know — ^just which are the — the 
 improvements, and which the 
 rooms ? " 
 
 This was lost on the j anitor. He 
 merely thought us stupid and re- 
 garded us with pitying disgust as 
 he indicated a rusty little range, 
 
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The Van Dwellers. 
 
 and disheartening water arrange- 
 ments in one corner. There may 
 have been stationary tubs, too, 
 bells, and a dumb waiter, but with- 
 ou.t the knowledge of these things 
 which we acquired later they es- 
 caped notice. What we could see 
 was that there was no provision for 
 heat that we could discover, and no 
 sunshine. 
 
 We referred to these things, also 
 to the fact that the only entrance 
 to our parlor would be through 
 the kitchen, while the only en- 
 trance to our kitchen would be al- 
 most certainly over either a coal- 
 box, an ironing board, or the rusty 
 little stove, any method of which 
 would require a certain skill, as 
 well as care in the matter of one's 
 clothes. 
 
 But these objections seemed un- 
 reasonable, no doubt, for the janitor, 
 who was of Yorkshire extraction, be- 
 
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The First Home. 
 
 came taciturn and remarked briefly 
 that tlie halls were warmed and 
 that nobody before had ever 
 required more heat than they got 
 from these and the range, while 
 as for the sun, he couldn't change 
 that if he wanted to, leaving us to 
 infer that if he only wanted to he 
 could remodel almost everything 
 else about the premises in short 
 order. 
 
 We went away in the belief that 
 he was a base pretender, " clad in a 
 little brief authority. ' ' We h ad not 
 awakened as yet to the fulness of 
 janitorial tyranny and power. 
 
 We went farther uptown. We 
 reasoned that rentals would be 
 more reasonable and apartments 
 less contracted up there. 
 
 Ah, me ! As I close my eyes 
 now and recall, as in a kaleido- 
 scope, the perfect wilderness of flats 
 we have passed through since then. 
 
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The Van Dwellers. 
 
 it seems strange ttat some dim fore- 
 boding of it all did not steal in to 
 rob our hearts of the careless joys 
 of anticipation. 
 
 But I digress. We took the ele- 
 vated and looked out the windows 
 as we sped along. The whirling 
 streets, with their endless proces- 
 sion of front steps, bewildered us. 
 
 By and by we were in a vast 
 district, where all the houses were 
 five-storied, flat-roofed, and seemed 
 built mainly to hold windows. 
 This was Flatland — the very heart 
 of it — that boundless territory to 
 the northward of Central Park, 
 where nightly the millions sleep. 
 
 Here and there were large signs 
 on side walls and on boards along 
 the roof, with which we were now 
 on a level as the train whirled us 
 along. These quoted the number 
 of rooms, and prices, and some of 
 them were almost irresistible, " 6 
 
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The First Home. 
 
 All Light Rooms, $22.00," caught 
 us at length, and we got off to 
 investigate. 
 
 They were better than those 
 downtown. There was a possiblity 
 of heat and you did not get to the 
 parlor by climbing over the kitchen 
 furniture. Still, the apartment as 
 a whole lacked much that we had 
 set our hearts on, while it contained 
 some things that we were willing 
 to do without. 
 
 It contained, also, certain novel- 
 ties. Among these were the sta- 
 tionary washtubs in the kitchen ; 
 the dumb-waiter, and a speaking- 
 tube connection with the basement. 
 
 The janitor at this place was a 
 somber Teutonic female, soiled as 
 to dress, and of the common Dutch- 
 slipper variety. 
 
 We were really attracted by the 
 next apartment, where we dis- 
 covered for the first time the small 
 
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8 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 button in the wall that, when 
 pressed, opens the street door be- 
 low. This was quite jolly, and we 
 played with it some minutes, while 
 the colored janitor grinned at our 
 artlessness, and said good things 
 about the place. Our hearts went 
 out to this person, and we would 
 gladly have cast our lot with 
 him. 
 
 Then he told us the price, and 
 we passed on. 
 
 I have a confused recollection 
 of the other flats and apartments 
 we examined on that first day of 
 our career, or " progress," as the 
 recent Mr. Hogarth would put it. 
 Our minds had not then become 
 trained to that perfection of mental- 
 ity which enables the skilled flat- 
 hunter to carry for days visual 
 ground-plans, elevations, ahd im- 
 provements, of any number of" de- 
 sirable apartments," and be ready to 
 
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The First Hi 
 
 ome. 
 
 transcribe the same in black and 
 white at a moment's notice. 
 
 I recall one tunnel and one 
 ' roof garden. Also one first floor 
 with bake-shop attachment. The 
 latter suggested a business en- 
 terprise for the Little Woman,while 
 the Precious Ones, who were with 
 us at this stage, seemed delighted 
 at my proposition of " keeping 
 store." 
 
 Many places we did not exam- 
 ine. Of these the janitors merely 
 popped out their heads — frowsy 
 heads, most of them — and gave 
 the number of rooms and the price 
 in a breath of defiance and mixed 
 ale. At length I was the only one 
 able to continue the search. 
 
 I left the others at a friendly 
 drug store, and wandered off alone. 
 Being quite untrammeled now I 
 went as if by instinct two blocks 
 west and turned. A park was 
 
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lo The Van Dwellers. 
 
 there — a park set up on edge, as 
 it were, with steps leading to a 
 battlement at the top. This was 
 attractive, and I followed along 
 opposite, looking at the houses. 
 
 Presently I came to a new one. 
 They were just finishing it, and 
 sweeping the shavings from the 
 ground-floor flat — a gaudy little 
 place — the only one in the house 
 untaken. 
 
 It was not very light, and it 
 was not very large, while the price 
 was more than we had expected 
 to pay. But it was clean and new, 
 and the landlord, who was him- 
 self on the premises, offered a 
 month's rent free to the first tenant. 
 
 I ran all the way back to the 
 Little Woman, and urged her to 
 limp as hastily as possible, fearing 
 it might be gone before she could 
 get there. When I realized that 
 the landlord had held it for me in 
 
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The First Home. 1 1 
 
 the face of several applicants (this 
 was his own statement), I was 
 ready to fall on his neck, and paid 
 a deposit hastily to secure the 
 premises. 
 
 Then we wandered about look- 
 ing at things, trying the dumb 
 waiter, the speaking tube, and the 
 push-button, leading to what the 
 Precious Ones promptly named 
 the " locker-locker " door, owing 
 to a clicking sound in the lock 
 when the door sprang open. 
 
 We were in a generous frame 
 of mind, and walked from room to 
 room praising the excellence of 
 everything, including a little gin- 
 gerbread mantel in the dining-room, 
 in which the fireplace had been 
 set crooked, — from being done in 
 the dark, perhaps, — the concrete 
 backyard, with its clothesline pole, 
 the decorated ceilings, the precip- 
 itoixs park opposite that was pres- 
 
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12 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 ently to shut off each day at two 
 p. M. our western, and only, sun- 
 light ; even the air-shaft that came 
 down to us like a well from above, 
 and the tiny kitchen, which in the 
 gathering evening was too dark to 
 reveal all its attractions. 
 
 As for the Precious Ones, they 
 fairly raced through our new pos- 
 session, shrieking their delight. 
 
 We had a home in the great 
 city at last. 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 1 3 
 
 II. 
 
 Metropolitan Beginnings. 
 
 WE set out gaily and early, 
 next morning, to buy our 
 things. 
 We had brouglit nothing with 
 us that could not be packed into 
 our trunks, except my fishing rod, 
 some inherited bedding and pic- 
 tures which the Little Woman de- 
 clined to part with, and two jaded 
 and overworked dolls belonging to 
 the Precious Ones. Manifestly this 
 was not enough to begin housekeep- 
 ing on, even in a flat of contracted 
 floor-space and limitless improve- 
 ments. 
 
 In fact the dolls only had arrived. 
 
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14 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 They had come as passengers. 
 The other things were still trun- 
 dling along somewhere between 
 Oshkosh and Hoboken, by slow 
 freight. 
 
 We had some idea of where we 
 wanted to go when we set forth, 
 but a storehouse with varied and 
 almost irresistible windows enticed 
 us and we went no farther. It was 
 a mighty department store and we 
 were informed that we need not 
 pass its doors again until we had 
 selected everything we needed from 
 a can-opener to a grand piano. We 
 didn't, and the can-opener became 
 ours. 
 
 Also other articles. We enjoyed 
 buying things, and even to this 
 day I recall with pleasure our first 
 gireat revel in a department store. 
 
 For the most part we united our 
 judgments and acted jointly. But 
 at times we were enticed apart by 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 15 
 
 fascinating novelties and selected 
 recklessly, without consultation. 
 
 As for tlie Precious Ones, they 
 galloped about, demanding that we 
 should buy everything in sight, 
 with a total disregard of our require- 
 ments or resources. 
 
 It was wonderful though how 
 cheap everything seemed, and how 
 much we seemed to need, even for a 
 beginning. It was also wonderful 
 how those insidious figures told in 
 the final settlement. 
 
 Let it be understood, I cherish no 
 resentment toward the salesmen. 
 Reflecting now on the matter, I am, 
 on the whole, grateful. They 
 found out where we were from, and 
 where we were going to live, and 
 they sold us accordingly. 
 
 I think we interested them, and 
 that they rather liked us. If not, 
 I am sure they would have sold us 
 worse things and more of them. 
 
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1 6 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 They could have done so, easily. 
 Hence my gratitude to the sales- 
 men ; but the man at the transfer 
 desk remains unforgiven. 
 
 I am satisfied, now, that he was 
 an unscrupulous person, a per- 
 jured, case-hardened creature whom 
 it is every man's duty to destroy. 
 But at the time he seemed the 
 very embodiment of good inten- 
 tions. 
 
 He assured us heartily, as he 
 gave us our change, that we should 
 have immediate delivery. We had 
 explained at some length that this 
 was important, and why. He waved 
 us off with the assurance that we 
 need give ourselves no uneasiness 
 in the matter — that, in all proba- 
 bility, the matting we had pur- 
 chased as a floor basis would be 
 there before we were. 
 
 He knew that this would start 
 us post-haste for our apartment. 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. \J 
 
 whicli it did. We even ran, waving 
 and shotiting, after a particular car 
 when another just like it was less 
 than a half block behind. 
 
 We breathed more easily when 
 we arrived at our new address and 
 found that we were in good season. 
 When five minutes more had 
 passed, however, and still no signs 
 of our matting, a vague uneasiness 
 began to manifest itself. 
 
 It was early and there was plenty 
 of time, of course ; but there was 
 something about the countless de- 
 livery wagons that passed and re- 
 passed without stopping which im- 
 pressed us with the littleness of our 
 importance in this great whirl of 
 traffic, and the ease with which 
 a transfer clerk's promise, easily 
 and cheerfully made, might be 
 as easily and as cheerfully for- 
 gotten. 
 
 I said presently that I would go 
 
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1 8 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 around the corner and order coal 
 for tlie range, ice for the refrig- 
 erator, and groceries for us all. 
 I added that the things from down 
 town would surely be there on my 
 return, and that any way I wanted 
 to learn where the nearest markets 
 were. Had I known it, I need not 
 have taken this trouble. Our 
 names in the mail-box just outside 
 the door would have summoned the 
 numerous emissaries of trade, as 
 bj' magic. 
 
 It did so, in fact, for the Little 
 Woman put the name in while I 
 was gone, and on my return I 
 found her besieged by no less than 
 three butchers and grocerymen, 
 while two rival milkmen were ex- 
 plaining with diagrams the com- 
 parative richness of their respective 
 cans and bottles. The articles I 
 had but just purchased were even 
 then being sent up on the dumb 
 
 • 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 19 
 
 waiter, but our furnishings from 
 below were still unheard from. 
 
 A horrible fear that I had given 
 the wrong address began to grow 
 upon us. The Little Woman was 
 calm, but regarded me accusingly. 
 She said she didn't see how it 
 could have happened, when in 
 every accent of her voice I could 
 detect memories of other things I 
 had done in this line — things 
 which, at the time, had seemed 
 equally impossible. 
 
 She said she hadn't been paying 
 attention when I gave the number 
 or she would have known. Of 
 course, she said, the transfer clerk 
 couldn't make a mistake putting it 
 down — he was too accustomed to 
 such things, and of course I must 
 have given it to him correctly — 
 only, it did seem strange 
 
 We began debating feverishly as 
 to the advisability of my setting 
 
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20 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 out at once on a trip down town to 
 see about it. We concluded to 
 telephone. 
 
 I hastened around to the drug 
 store not far away and " helloed " 
 and repeated and fumed and swore 
 in agony for half an hour, but I 
 came back in high spirits. The 
 address was correct and the deliv- 
 ery wagons were out. I expected 
 to find them at the door when I got 
 back, but found only the Little 
 Woman, sitting on the doorstep, 
 still waiting. 
 
 We told each other that after all 
 it must necessarily take some little 
 time to get up this far, but that the 
 matting would certainly be along 
 presently, now, and that it would 
 take but a short time to lay it. 
 Then we would have a good start, 
 and even if everything didn't come 
 to-night it would be jolly to put 
 the new mattresses down on the 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 21 
 
 nice clean matting, and to get din- 
 ner the best way we could — like 
 camping out. Then we walked 
 back and forth in the semi-light of 
 our empty little place and said how 
 nice it was, and where we should 
 set the furniture and hang the 
 pictures : and stepped off the size 
 of the rooms that all put together 
 were not so big as had been our one 
 big sitting-room in the West. 
 
 As for the Precious Ones, they 
 were wildly happy. They had 
 never had a real playhouse before, 
 big enough to live in, and this was 
 quite in accordance with their 
 ideals. They were " visiting" and 
 " keeping store " and " cooking," 
 and quarreling, and having a per- 
 fectly beautiful time with their two 
 disreputable dolls, utterly regard- 
 less of the shadow of foreboding 
 and desolation that grew ever 
 thicker as the hours passed, while 
 
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22 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 tlie sun slipped down behind the 
 steep stone-battlemented park op- 
 posite, and brought no matting, no 
 furniture, no anything that would 
 make our little nest habitable for 
 the swiftly coming night. 
 
 But when it became too dark for 
 them to see to play, they came 
 clamorously out to where we stood 
 on the doorstep, still waiting, and 
 demanded in one breath that we 
 tell them immediately when the 
 things were coming, where they 
 were to get supper, how we were to 
 sleep, and if they couldn't have a 
 light. 
 
 I was glad that I could give them 
 something. I said that it was pretty 
 early for a light, but that they 
 should have it. I went in and 
 opened a gas burner, and held a 
 match to it. There was no result. 
 I said there was air in the pipes. 
 I lit another match, and held it till 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 23 
 
 it burned my fingers. There was 
 air in the pipes, I suppose, but 
 there was no gas. I hurried down 
 to inform the janitor. 
 
 She was a stern-featured Hi- 
 bernian, with a superior bearing. 
 I learned later that she had seen 
 better days. In fact, I have yet to 
 find the janitor that hasn't seen 
 better days, or the tenant, either, 
 for that matter, but this is another 
 digression. She regarded me with 
 indifference when I told her there 
 was no gas. When I told her that 
 we wanted gas, she inspected me 
 as if this was something unusual 
 and interesting in a tenant's re- 
 quirements. Finally she said : — 
 
 " Well, and when did yez order 
 it turned on ? " 
 
 " Why," I said, " I haven't 
 ordered it at all. I thought " 
 
 " Yez thought you could get it 
 of me, did yez ? " 
 
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24 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 I admitted that this seemed 
 reasonable, but in view of the fact 
 of the water being turned on, I had 
 really given the matter of gas no 
 definite consideration. 
 
 I think she rather pitied my 
 stupendous ignorance. At least 
 she became more gentle than she 
 had seemed at the start, or than 
 she ever was afterwards. 
 
 She explained at some length 
 that I must go first to the gas ofl&ce, 
 leave a deposit to secure them, in 
 case of my sudden and absent- 
 minded departure from the neigh- 
 borhood, and ask that a man be 
 sent around to put in a meter, and 
 turn on the gas in our apartment. 
 With good luck some result might 
 be obtained by the following eve- 
 ning. 
 
 I stumbled miserably up the 
 dark stairs, and dismally explained, 
 while the Precious Ones became 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 25 
 
 more clamorous for food and light, 
 as the shades of night gathered. 
 I said I would go and get some 
 candles, so in case the things came 
 — not necessarily the matting — we 
 didn't really need the matting first, 
 anyway — it would get scuffed and 
 injured if it were put down first — 
 it was the other things we need- 
 ed — things to eat and go to bed 
 with ! — 
 
 When I came back there was 
 a wild excitement around our en- 
 trance. A delivery wagon had 
 driven up in great haste, and by the 
 light of the street lamp I recognized 
 on it the sign of our department 
 store. A hunted-looking driver 
 had leaped out and was hastily 
 running over his book. Yes, it 
 was our name — our things had 
 come at last — better late than 
 never! The driver was diving 
 back into his wagon and presently 
 
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26 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 hauled out sometliing long and 
 round and wrapped up. 
 
 " Here you are," he said trium- 
 phantly. " Sign for it, please." 
 
 " But," we gasped, " where's 
 the rest of the things ? There's 
 ever so much more." 
 
 " Don't know, lady. This is all 
 I've got. Sign, please, it's getting 
 late." 
 
 " But " 
 
 He was gone. We carried in 
 our solitary package and opened it 
 by the feeble flickering of a par- 
 affine dip. 
 
 It was a Japanese umbrella- 
 holder ! 
 
 The Precious Ones and their 
 wretched dolls held a war dance 
 around it and admired the funny 
 men on the sides. To us it was an 
 Oriental mockery. 
 
 Sadly we gathered up our bags, 
 and each taking by the hand a 
 
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Metropolitan Beginnings. 27 
 
 hungry little creature who clasped 
 a forlorn doll to aweary little bosom, 
 we set forth to seek food and 
 shelter in the thronging but pitiless 
 city. 
 
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28 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 III. 
 
 Learning by Experience. 
 
 DAY by day, and piece by piece, 
 our purcbases appeared. Now 
 and then a delivery wagon 
 would drive up in bot baste and 
 deliver a stew-pan, or perbaps a 
 mouse trap. At last, and on tbe 
 tbird day, a mattress. 
 
 Of course, I bad been down and 
 protested, ere tbis. Tbe cbeerful 
 liar at tbe transfer desk bad been 
 grieved, astonisbed, thunderstruck 
 at my tale. He would investigate, 
 and somebody would be discharged, 
 at once. Tbis thought soothed me. 
 It was blood that I wanted. Just 
 plain blood, and plenty of it. I 
 
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Learning by Experience. 29 
 
 know now that it was the transfer- 
 man's blood that I needed, but for 
 the moment I was appeased and 
 believed in him. 
 
 Our matting, promised within 
 two hours from the moment of pur- 
 chase, was the last thing to arrive. 
 This on the fourth day — or was it 
 the fifth ? I was too mad by this 
 time to remember dates. What I 
 do recall is that we laid it ourselves. 
 We had not, as yet, paid for the 
 laying, and we said that rather than 
 give that shameless firm another 
 dollar we would lay that matting if 
 it killed us. 
 
 Morally it did. I have never 
 been quite the same man since that 
 terrible experience. The Little 
 Woman helped stretch, and held 
 the lamp, while I pounded my 
 thumb and swore. She said she 
 had never realized until that night 
 how well and satisfactorily I could 
 
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3© The Van Dwellers. 
 
 swear. It seemed to comfort her 
 and slie abetted it. 
 
 I know now that tlie stripes on 
 matting never matcli. We didn't 
 know it then, and we tried to make 
 them. We pulled and hauled, and 
 I got down on my stomach, with 
 one ear against the wall, and 
 burned the other one on the lamp 
 chimney which the Little Woman, 
 in her anxiety to help, held too 
 close. When I criticised her in- 
 clination to overdo matters, she 
 observed that I would probably be 
 able to pull the matting along 
 more easily if I wouldn't lie down 
 on the piece I was trying to pull. 
 Then we both said some things 
 that I suppose we shall regret to 
 our dying day. It was a terrible 
 night. When morning came, grim 
 and ghastly, life seemed a failure, 
 and I could feel that I had grown 
 old. 
 
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Learning by Experience. 3 1 
 
 But with breakfast and coflfee 
 and sunshine came renewed hope. 
 
 We were settled at last, and our 
 little place looked clean and more 
 like a playhouse than ever. 
 
 Our acquaintance with the janitor 
 was not, as yet, definite. I had 
 met her once or twice informally, 
 it is true, but as yet we could not 
 be said to have reached any basis 
 of understanding. As to her ap- 
 pearance, she was brawny and Irish, 
 with a forbidding countenance. 
 She had a husband whom we 
 never saw — he being employed 
 outside — but whose personality, 
 nevertheless, became a factor in our 
 subsequent relations. 
 
 Somehow, we instinctively avoided 
 the people below stairs, as cats do 
 canines, though we had no tradi- 
 tions concerning janitors, and we 
 are naturally the most friendly and 
 democratic people in the world. 
 
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32 The Van ^Dwellers. 
 
 Matters went on very well for a 
 time. We congratulated ourselves 
 every morning on how nice and 
 handy everything was, now that 
 we were once settled, and laughed 
 over our recent difficulties. The 
 Precious Ones were in their glory. 
 They had appropriated the little 
 four-by-six closet back of the 
 kitchen — it had been shown to us 
 as a servant's room — and presently 
 we heard them playing " dumb 
 waiter," " janitor," " locker-locker 
 door," " laying matting," and other 
 new and entertaining games in- 
 cidental to a new life and condi- 
 tions. The weather remained warm 
 for a time, and it was all novel and 
 interesting. We added almost 
 daily to our household effects, and 
 agreed that we had been lucky in 
 securing so pleasant and so snug 
 a nest. 
 
 But one morning when we awoke 
 
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Learning by Experience. 33 
 
 it was cold. It was early October, 
 but there was a keen frosty feeling 
 in the air that sent us shivering 
 to the kitchen range, wondering 
 if steam would be coming along 
 presently. It did not come, and 
 after breakfast I went down to in- 
 terview our janitor on the subject, 
 
 I could see that she was not sur- 
 prised at my errand. The incident 
 of the gas supply had prepared her 
 for any further eccentricity on my 
 part. She merely waited with mild 
 interest to hear what I really could 
 do when I tried. Then she re- 
 marked tersely : — 
 
 " Yez get steam on the fifteenth." 
 
 " Quite so," I assented, " but it's 
 cold to-day. We may not want it 
 on the fifteenth. We do want it 
 now." 
 
 These facts did not seem to im- 
 press her. 
 
 " Yez get steam on the fifteenth," 
 3 
 
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34 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 site repeated, with even more de- 
 cision, and I could tell from her 
 manner that the interview was 
 closed. 
 
 I went back to where the Little 
 Woman was getting breakfast (she 
 had laughed at the idea of a serv- 
 ant in our dainty little nest) and 
 during the morning she and the 
 Precious Ones hugged the kitchen 
 range. In the afternoon the sun 
 looked in at our parlor windows 
 and made the room cheerful for an 
 hour. Then it went out behind 
 the precipitous hillside park oppo- 
 site, and with the chill shadow that 
 crept up over our windows came a 
 foreboding that was bad for the 
 romance and humor of the situation. 
 It had been like a spiritless Arctic 
 day. 
 
 In the evening we crept to the 
 kitchen range ; and we hibernated 
 there, more or less, while the cold 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Learning hy Experience. 35 
 
 spell lasted. It was warm by tlie 
 fifteenth, but on that day, in the 
 hours of early dawn, we were 
 awakened by a Wagnerian overture 
 in the steam radiators. It became 
 an anvil chorus ere long and there 
 was no more sleep. By breakfast 
 time we had all the things open 
 that we could get open to let in 
 fresh air and we were shouting to 
 each other above the din and smell 
 of the new pipes. We made allow- 
 ance, of course, for the fact that 
 things were new, and we said we 
 were glad there would be enough 
 heat in cold weather, anyway, by 
 which you will see how really in- 
 nocent we were in those days. 
 
 It grew cold in earnest by No- 
 vember first. And then, all at 
 once, the gold-painted radiators, as 
 if they had shown what they could 
 do and were satisfied, seemed to 
 lose enthusiasm. Now and then 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
36 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 in the night, when we didn't want 
 it, they would remember and start 
 a little movement from the Gotter- 
 dammerung, but by morning they 
 seemed discouraged again and dur- 
 ing the day they were of fitful and 
 unresponsive temperature. 
 
 At last I went once more to the 
 janitor, though with some hesita- 
 tion, I confess. I don't know why. 
 I am not naturally timid, and 
 usually demand and obtain the 
 rights of ordinary citizenship. 
 Besides, I was ignorant then of 
 janitorial tyranny as the accepted 
 code. It must have been instinct. 
 I said : — 
 
 "What's the matter with our 
 heat up-stairs ? " 
 
 She answered : — 
 
 " An' it's what's the matter with 
 yer heat, is it? Well, thin, an' 
 what is the matter with yer heat 
 up-stairs ? " 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Learning by Experience. 37 
 
 She said this, and also looked at 
 me, as if she thought our heat 
 might be afflicted with the mumps 
 or measles or have a hare lip, and 
 as if I was to blame for it. 
 
 " The matter is that we haven't 
 got any," I said, getting somewhat 
 awakened. 
 
 She looked at me fully a minute 
 this time. 
 
 " Yez haven't got any I Yez 
 haven't got any heat ! An' here 
 comes the madam from the top 
 floor yesterday, a bilin' over, an' 
 sayin' that they're sick with too 
 much heat. What air yez, then, 
 sallymandhers ? " 
 
 " But yesterday isn't to-day," I 
 urged, " and I'm not the woman 
 on the top floor. We're just the 
 people on the first floor and we're 
 cold. We want heat, not compari- 
 sons." 
 
 I wonder now how I was ever 
 
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38 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 bold enough to say these things. 
 It was my ignorance, of course. I 
 would not dream of speaking thus 
 disrespectfully to a janitor to-day. 
 I had a dim idea at the time that 
 the landlord had something to do 
 with his own premises, and that if 
 heat were not forthcoming I could 
 consult him and get action in the 
 matter. I know better than that, 
 now, and my enlightenment on this 
 point was not long delayed. 
 
 It was about twelve o'clock that 
 night, I think, that we were aroused 
 by a heart-breaking, furniture- 
 smashing disturbance. At first I 
 thought murder was being done on 
 our doorstep. Then I realized that 
 it was below us. I sat up in bed, 
 my hair prickling. The Little 
 Woman, in the next room with the 
 Precious Ones, called to me in a 
 voice that was full of emotion. I 
 answered, " Sh ! " 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Learning by Experience. 39 
 
 Then we both sat still in the 
 dark while our veins grew icy. 
 Somebody below was begging and 
 pleading for mercy, while some- 
 body else was commanding quiet 
 in a voice that meant bloodshed as 
 an alternative. At intervals there 
 was a fierce struggle, mingled with 
 destruction and hair-lifting lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Was the janitor murdering her 
 husband? Or could it be that it 
 was the other way, and that tardy 
 justice had overtaken the janitor — 
 that, at the hands of her husband 
 or some outraged tenant, she was 
 meeting a well-merited doom ? 
 Remembering her presence and 
 muscular proportions I could not 
 hope that this was possible. 
 
 The Little Woman whispered 
 tremblingly that we ought to do 
 something. I whispered back that 
 I was quite willing she should, if 
 
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40 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 she wanted to, but that for my own 
 part I had quit interfering in 
 Hibernian domestic difl&culties 
 some years since. In the morning 
 I would complain to the landlord of 
 our service. I would stand it no 
 longer. 
 
 Meantime, it was not yet morn- 
 ing, and the racket below went on. 
 The very quantity of it was reas- 
 suring. There was too much of 
 it for real murder. The Precious 
 Ones presently woke up and cried. 
 None of us got to sleep again until 
 well-nigh morning, even after the 
 commotion below had degenerated 
 into occasional moans, and final 
 silence. 
 
 Before breakfast I summoned up 
 all my remaining courage and 
 went down there. The janitor her- 
 self came to the door. She was 
 uninjured, so far as I could discov- 
 er. I was pretty mad, and the fact 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Learning by Experience. 41 
 
 that I was afraid of lier made me 
 madder. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " I de- 
 manded, " by making such a hor- 
 rible racket down here in the 
 middle of the night ? " 
 
 She regarded me with an amazed 
 look, as if I had been dreaming. 
 
 *' I want to know," I repeated, 
 " what was all that noise down here 
 last night ? " 
 
 She smiled grimly. 
 
 " Oh, an' is that it? Yez want 
 to know what was the n'tse, do 
 yez ? Well, thin, it was none o' yer 
 business, thafs what it was. Now 
 go on wid yez, an' tend to yer own 
 business, if yez have any. D' y' 
 mind?" 
 
 With the information that I was 
 going at once to the landlord, I 
 turned and hurried up the stairs to 
 avoid violence. She promptly fol- 
 lowed me. 
 
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42 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 " So yez'U be after telling the 
 landlord, will yez ? Well, thin, 
 yez can just tell the landlord, an' 
 yez can just sind him to me. 
 You'll sind Tim Reilly to me. 
 Maybe yez don't know that Tim 
 Reilly once carried bricks fer my 
 old daddy, an' many's the time I've 
 given him a bite an' a sup at our 
 back door. Oh, yes, sind him to 
 me. Sind Tim Reilly to me, an' 
 I'll see, when me ol' man comes 
 home late wid a bit of liquor in his 
 head, if it's not for me to conthrol 
 'im after our own fashions, widout 
 the inquisitin' of people who better 
 be mindin' of their own n'ise. 
 Kep' yez awake, eh ? Well, thin, 
 see that yez never keep anybody 
 else awake, an' sind Tim Reilly 
 to me I " 
 
 She was gone. We realized then 
 that she had seen better days. So 
 had we. Later, when I passed her 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Learning by Experience. 43 
 
 on the front steps, she nodded in 
 her usual expressionless, uncom- 
 promising manner. 
 , I did not go to the landlord. It 
 would be useless, we said. The 
 helplessness of our position was 
 becoming daily more evident. 
 
 And with the realization of this 
 we began to discover other defects. 
 We found that the house faced 
 really almost north instead of west, 
 and that the sun now went behind 
 the precipice opposite nearly as 
 soon as it touched the tops of our 
 windows, while the dining-room 
 and kitchen were wretchedly dark 
 all day long. 
 
 Then, too, the crooked fireplace 
 in the former was a disfigurement, 
 the rooms were closets, or cells, 
 the paper abominable, the wardrobe 
 damp, the drawers swollen or exas- 
 perating misfits, the whole apart- 
 ment the flimsiest sort of a cheap, 
 
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44 T^he Van Dwellers. 
 
 siowy, contract structure, such as 
 no self-respecting people should 
 occupy. 
 
 We said we would move. We 
 recited our wrongs to each other in 
 detail, and began consulting Sun- 
 day papers immediately. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Our First Move. 45 
 
 IV. 
 
 Our First Move. 
 
 IT was tlie lyittle Woman who 
 selected our next habitation. 
 
 Education accumulates rapidly 
 in the Metropolis, and I could see 
 that she already possessed more 
 definite views on " flats and apart- 
 ments " than she had acquired on 
 many another subject familiar to 
 her from childhood. 
 
 Politics, for instance, do not 
 exist for the Little Woman. Presi- 
 dents come and go, torchlight pro- 
 cessions bloom and fade and leave 
 not so much as a wind-riffle on the 
 sands of memory. The stock 
 market, too, was at this time but a 
 
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46 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 name to her. Botli of us have 
 acquired knowledge since in this 
 direction, but that is another story. 
 Shares might rise and fall in those 
 early days, and men clutch at each 
 other's throats as ruin dragged them 
 down. The Little Woman saw 
 but a page of figures in the eve- 
 ning paper and perhaps regarded 
 them as a sort of necessary form — 
 somewhat in the nature of the con- 
 gressional reports which nobody 
 ever reads. Yet all her life she 
 had been amid these vital issues, 
 and now, behold, after two short 
 months she had acquired more in- 
 formation on New York apartment 
 life than she would ever have on 
 both the others put together. She 
 knew now what we needed and she 
 would find it. I was willing that 
 this should be so. There were 
 other demands on my time, and 
 besides, I had not then contracted 
 
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Our First Move. 47 
 
 fhe flat-disease in its subsequent 
 virulent form. 
 
 She said, and I agreed witli her, 
 that it was a mistake to be so far 
 from the business center. That the 
 time, car fare, and nerve tissue 
 wasted between Park Place and 
 Harlem were of more moment than 
 a few dollars' difference in the 
 monthly rent. 
 
 We regarded this conclusion 
 somewhat in the light of a discovery, 
 and wondered why people of ex- 
 perience had not made it before. 
 Ah, me ! we have made many dis- 
 coveries since that time. Discoveries 
 as old as they are always new. The 
 first friendly ray of March sunlight; 
 the first green leaf in the park ; 
 the first summer glow of June ; 
 the first dead leaf and keen blast 
 of autumn ; these, too, have wakened 
 within us each year a new under- 
 standing of our needs and of the 
 
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48 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 ideal habitation ; these, too, have 
 set us to discovering as often as 
 they come around, as men shall still 
 discover so long as seasons of snow 
 and blossom pass, and the heart of 
 youth seeks change. But here I am 
 digressing again, when I should 
 be getting on with my story. 
 
 As I have said, the Little Woman 
 selected our next home. The 
 Little Woman and the Precious 
 Ones. They were gone each day 
 for several hours and returned each 
 evening wearied to the bone but 
 charged heavily with information. 
 
 The Little Woman was no longer 
 a novice. " Single and double 
 flats," " open plumbing," " tiled 
 vestibule," " uniformed hall serv- 
 ice," and other stock terms, came 
 trippingly from her tongue. 
 
 Of some of the places she had 
 diagrams. Of others she volun- 
 teered to draw them from memory. 
 
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Our First Move. 49 
 
 I did not then realize that this was 
 the first symptom of flat-collecting 
 in its acute form, or that in examin- 
 ing her crude pencilings I was 
 courting the infection. I could 
 not foresee that the slight yet defi- 
 nite and curious variation in the 
 myriad city apartments might be- 
 come a fascination at last, and the 
 desire for possession a mania more 
 enslaving than even the acquire- 
 ment of rare rugs or old china and 
 bottles. 
 
 I examined the Little Woman's 
 assortment with growing interest 
 while the Precious Ones chorused 
 their experiences, which consisted 
 mainly in the things they had 
 been allowed to eat and drink, 
 and from the nature of these I 
 suspected occasional surrender and 
 bribery on the part of the Little 
 Woman. 
 
 It was a place well down town 
 4 
 
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50 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 that we chose. It was a second 
 floor, open in the rear, and there 
 was sunlight most of the day. The 
 rooms were really better than the 
 ones we had. They could not be 
 worse, we decided — a fallacy, for I 
 have never seen a flat so bad that 
 there could not be a worse one — 
 and the price was not much higher. 
 Also, there was a straight fireplace 
 in the dining-room, which the 
 Precious Ones described as being 
 " lovelly," and the janitress was a 
 humble creature who had won the 
 Little Woman's heart by unbur- 
 dening herself of numerous sad ex- 
 periences and bitter wrongs, be- 
 sides a number of perfectly just 
 opinions concerning janitors, indi- 
 vidually and at large. 
 
 Altogether the place seemed quite 
 in accordance with our present 
 views. I paid a month's rent in 
 advance the next morning, and 
 
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THE PRECIOUS ONES WERE RACING ABOUT AMONG BOXES 
 AND BARRELS IN UNALLOYED HAPPINESS. 
 
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Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Our First Move. 51 
 
 during the day the Little Woman 
 engaged a moving man. 
 
 She was packing when I came 
 home and the Precious Ones were 
 racing about among boxes and 
 barrels in unalloyed happiness. It 
 did not seem possible that we had 
 bought so much or that I could have 
 put so many tacks in the matting. 
 
 The moving men would be there 
 with their van by daylight next 
 morning, she said. (It seems that 
 the man at the oflSce had told her 
 that we would have to get up early 
 to get ahead of him, and she had 
 construed this statement literally.) 
 So we toiled far into the night and 
 then crept wearily to bed in our 
 dismantled nest, to toss wakefully 
 through the few remaining hours 
 of darkness, fearful that the sum- 
 mons of the forehanded and expedi- 
 tious moving man would find us in 
 slumber and unprepared. 
 
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52 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 We were deeply grateful to him 
 that he did not arrived before we 
 had finished our early and scrappy 
 breakfast. Then presently, when 
 we were ready for him and he did 
 not appear, we were still apprecia- 
 tive, for we said to each other that 
 he was giving us a little extra time 
 so that we would not feel upset and 
 hurried. Still, it would be just as 
 well if he would come, now, so that 
 we might get moved and settled be- 
 fore night. 
 
 It had been a bright, pleasant 
 morning, but as the forenoon ad- 
 vanced the sky darkened and it grew 
 bitterly cold. Gloom settled down 
 without and the meager steam 
 supply was scarcely noticeable in 
 our bare apartment. The Precious 
 Ones ran every minute to the door 
 to watch for the moving van and 
 came back to us with blue noses 
 and icy hands. We began to 
 
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Our First Move. 53 
 
 wonder if something had gone 
 wrong. Perhaps a misunderstand- 
 ing of the address — illness or sud- 
 den death on the part of the man 
 who had made the engagement — 
 perhaps — 
 
 I went around at last to make 
 inquiries. A heavy, dusty person 
 looked into the soiled book and ran 
 his finger down the page. 
 
 " That's right ! " he announced. 
 " Address all correct. Van on the 
 way around there now." 
 
 I hurried back comforted. I do 
 not believe in strong language, but 
 that heavy individual with the 
 soiled book was a dusty liar. There 
 is no other word to express it — if 
 there was, and a stronger one, I 
 would use it. He was a liar by in- 
 stinct and a prevaricator by trade. 
 The van was not at our door when 
 I returned. Neither had it started 
 in our direction. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
54 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 We had expected to get down to 
 our new quarters by noon and en- 
 joy a little luncli at a near-by res- 
 taurant before putting things in 
 order. At luncb time tbe van had 
 still not appeared and there was no 
 near-by restaurant. The Precious 
 Ones began to demand food and 
 the lyittle Woman laboriously dug 
 down into several receptacles be- 
 fore she finally brought forth part 
 of a loaf of dry bread and a small, 
 stony lump of butter. But to the 
 Precious Ones it meant life and re- 
 newed joy. 
 
 The moving man came at one 
 o'clock and in a great hurry. He 
 seemed surprised that we were 
 ready for him. There were so 
 many reasons why he had not come 
 sooner that we presently wondered 
 how he had been able to get there 
 at all. He was a merry, self- 
 assured villain, and whistled as he 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Our First Move. ^^ 
 
 and his rusty assistant hustled our 
 things out on the pavement, leav- 
 ing all the doors open. 
 
 We were not contented with his 
 manner of loading. The pieces we 
 were proud of — our polished Louis- 
 XlVth-Street furniture — he hur- 
 ried into the darkness of his mighty 
 van, while those pieces which in 
 every household are regarded more 
 as matters of use than ornament 
 he left ranged along the pavement 
 for all the world to gape at. Now 
 and then he paused to recount in- 
 cidents of his former varied experi- 
 ence and to try on such of my old 
 clothes as came within his reach 
 I realized now why most of the 
 things he wore did not fit him. 
 His wardrobe was the accumulation 
 of many movings. 
 
 His contempt for our furniture 
 was poorly concealed. He sug- 
 gested, kindly enough, however, 
 
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56 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 that for living around in flats it was 
 too light, and after briefly watch- 
 ing his handling of it I quite agreed 
 with him. It was four o'clock 
 when we were finally off, and the 
 shades of evening had fallen before 
 we reached our new home. 
 
 The generous and sympathetic 
 welcome of our new janitress was 
 like balm. She was low-voiced and 
 her own sorrows had filled her with 
 a broad understanding of human 
 trials. She looked weary herself, 
 and suggested en passant that the 
 doctor had prescribed a little stimu- 
 lant as being what she most needed, 
 but that, of course, such things 
 were not for the poor. 
 
 I had a bottle of material, dis- 
 tilled over the peat fires of Scot- 
 land. I knew where it was and I 
 found it for her. Then the moving 
 man came up with a number of our 
 belongings and we forgot her in 
 
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Our First Move. ^y 
 
 the general turmoil and misery that 
 ensued. Bump — bump — up the 
 narrow stairs came our household 
 goods and gods, and were planted 
 at random about the floor, in shape- 
 less heaps and pyramids. All were 
 up, at last, except a few large 
 pieces. 
 
 At this point in the proceedings 
 the moving man and his assistant 
 paused in their labors and the for- 
 mer fished out of his misfit cloth- 
 ing a greasy piece of paper which he 
 handed me. I glanced at it under 
 the jet and saw that it was my bill. 
 
 " Oh, all right, " I said, " I can't 
 stop just now. Wait till you get 
 everything up, and then I can get 
 at my purse and pay you." 
 
 He grinned at me. 
 
 " It's the boss's rule," he said, 
 " to collect before the last things 
 is taken out of the van." 
 
 I understood now why the pieces 
 
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58 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 of value had gone in first, I also 
 understood what the " boss " had 
 meant in saying that we would 
 have to get up early to get ahead 
 of him. While I was digging up 
 the money they made side remarks 
 to each other on the lateness of the 
 hour, the length of the stairs, and 
 the heaviness of the pieces still to 
 come. I gave them each a liberal 
 tip in sheer desperation. 
 
 They were gone at last and we 
 stood helplessly among our belong- 
 ings that lay like flotsam and jet- 
 sam tossed up on a forbidding 
 shore. The Precious Ones were 
 whimpering with cold and hunger 
 and want of sleep ; the hopelessness 
 of life pressed heavily upon us. 
 Wearily we dragged something to- 
 gether for beds, and then crept out 
 to find food. When we returned 
 there was a dark object in the dim 
 hall against our door. I struck 
 
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Our First Move. 59 
 
 a match to see what it was. It 
 a woman, and the sorrows of living 
 and the troubles of dying were as 
 naught to her. Above and about 
 her hung the aroma of the peat fires 
 of Scotland. It was our janitress, 
 and she had returned us the empty 
 bottle. 
 
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6o The Van Dwellers. 
 
 V. 
 
 A Boarding House for a Change. 
 
 OUR new janitor was not alto- 
 gether unworthy, but she 
 drowned her sorrows too 
 deeply and too often, and her 
 praiseworthy attributes were inci- 
 dentally sitbmerged in the process. 
 She was naturally kind-hearted, 
 and meant to be industrious, but the 
 demon of the still had laid its 
 blight heavily upon her. We 
 often found her grim and harsh, 
 even to the point of malevolence, 
 and she did not sweep the stairs. 
 We attempted diplomacy at 
 first, and affected a deep sympathy 
 with her wrongs. Then we tried 
 bribery, and in this moral decline 
 
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A Boarding House. 6i 
 
 I descended to things that I wish 
 now neither to confess nor remem- 
 ber. 
 
 In desperation, at last, we com- 
 plained to the agent, whereupon 
 she promptly inundated her griefs 
 even more deeply than usual, and 
 sat upon the stairs outside our door 
 to denounce us. She declared that 
 a widow's curse was upon us, and 
 that we would never prosper. It 
 sounded gruesome at the time, but 
 we have wondered since whether a 
 grass widow's is as effective, for 
 we learned presently that her 
 spouse, though absent, was still in 
 the flesh. 
 
 It was at the end of the second 
 month that we agreed upon board- 
 ing. We said that after all house- 
 keeping on a small scale was less 
 agreeable and more expensive than 
 one might suppose, viewing it at 
 long range. 
 
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62 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 We looked over tlie papers again 
 and found the inducements attract- 
 ive. We figured out that we could 
 get two handsome rooms and board 
 for no more, and perhaps even a 
 trifle less, than we had been ex- 
 pending on the doubtful luxury of 
 apartment life. Then, too, there 
 would be a freedom from the re- 
 sponsibility of marketing, and the 
 preparation of food. We looked 
 forward to being able to come down 
 to the dining-room without know- 
 ing beforehand just what we were 
 going to have. 
 
 It was well that we enjoyed this 
 pleasure in anticipation. Viewed in 
 the retrospective it is wanting. We 
 did know exactly what we were go- 
 ing to have after the first week. We 
 learned the combination perfectly 
 in that time, and solved the system 
 of deductive boarding-house econ- 
 omy within the month so correctly 
 
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A hoarding House. 63 
 
 that given the Sunday bill of fare 
 we could have supplied in minute 
 detail the daily program for the re- 
 mainder of any week in the year. 
 
 Of course there is a satisfaction 
 in working out a problem like that, 
 and we did take a grim pleasure on 
 Sunday afternoons in figuring just 
 what we were to have for each meal 
 on the rest of the days, but after 
 the novelty of this wore off there 
 began to be something really deadly 
 about the exactness of this house- 
 hold machinery and the certainty 
 of our calculations. 
 
 The prospect of Tuesday's stew, 
 for instance, was not a thing to be 
 disregarded or lightly disposed of. 
 It assumed a definite place in the 
 week's program as early as two 
 o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and 
 even when Tuesday was lived dowTi 
 and had linked itself to the past, the 
 memory of its cuisine lingered and 
 
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64 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 lay upon us until we even fancied 
 that tlie very walls of our two plush 
 upholstered rooms were tinged and 
 tainted and permeated with the 
 haunting sorrow of a million Tues- 
 day stews. 
 
 It is true that we were no longer 
 subject to janitorial dictation, or 
 to the dumb-waiter complications 
 which are often distressing to those 
 who live at the top of the house and 
 get the last choice of the meat and 
 ice deliveries, but our landlady and 
 the boarders we had always with 
 us. 
 
 The former was a very stout per- 
 son and otherwise afflicted with 
 Christian science and a weak chest. 
 It did not seem altogether consistent 
 that she'should have both, though 
 we did not encourage a discussion 
 of the matter. We were willing 
 that she should have as many 
 things as she could stand up under 
 
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A Boarding House. . 65 
 
 if she only wouldn't try to divide 
 tliem with us. 
 
 I am sure now that some of the 
 other boarders must have been dis- 
 courteous and even harsh with this 
 unfortunate female, and that by 
 contrast we appeared sympathetic 
 and kind. At least, it seemed that 
 she drifted to us by some natural 
 process, and evenings when I 
 wanted to read, or be read to by 
 the Little Woman, she blew in to 
 review the story of her ailments 
 and to expound the philosophy 
 which holds that all the ills of life 
 are but vanity and imagination. 
 Perhaps her ailments may have 
 been all imagination and vanity, 
 but they did not seem so to us. 
 They seemed quite real. Indeed 
 they became so deadly real in time 
 that more than once we locked our 
 doors after the Precious Ones were 
 asleep, turned out the gas, and sat 
 5 
 
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66 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 silent and trembling in darkness 
 until tlie destroying angel should 
 pass by. 
 
 I have spoken of tbe boarders. 
 Tbey too laid tbeir burdens upon 
 us. For wbat reason I can only 
 conjecture. Tbey brought us tbeir 
 whole stock of complaints — com- 
 plaints of the landlady, of the table 
 and of each other. Being from the 
 great wide West we may have 
 seemed a bit more broadly human 
 than most of those whose natures 
 had been dwarfed and blighted in 
 the city's narrow soulless round of 
 daily toil. Or it may be all of 
 them had fallen out among them- 
 selves before we came. I don't 
 know. I know that a good many of 
 them had, for they told us about 
 it — casually at first, and then in 
 
 detail. 
 
 As an example, we learned from 
 the woman across the hall that 
 
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A Boarding House. 67 
 
 another woman, who occupied the 
 top floor back and painted undesir- 
 able water-colors, had been once an 
 artist's model, and that she smoked. 
 From the top floor back, in turn, 
 we discovered that the woman 
 across the way, now a writer of 
 more or less impossible plays, had 
 been formerly a ballet girl and still 
 did a turn now and then to aid in 
 the support of a dissolute and 
 absent husband. 
 
 These things made it trying for 
 us. We could not tell which was 
 the more deserving of sympathy. 
 Both seemed to have drawn a pretty 
 poor hand in what was a hard 
 enough game at best. And there 
 were others. 
 
 Within the month we were con- 
 versant with all the existing feuds 
 as well as those of the past, and 
 with the plots that were being 
 hatched to result in a new brood of 
 
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68 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 scandals and counterplots, which 
 were retailed to the Little Woman 
 and subsequently to me. We were 
 a regular clearing-house at last for 
 the wrongs and shortcomings of 
 the whole establishment, and the 
 responsibility of our position 
 weighed us down. 
 
 We had never been concerned in 
 intrigue before, and it did not agree 
 with our simple lives. I could feel 
 myself deteriorating, morally and 
 intellectually. I had a desire to 
 beat the Precious Ones (who were 
 certainly well behaved for children 
 shut up in two stuffy rooms) or bet- 
 ter still to set the house afire, and 
 run amuck killing and slaying down 
 four flights of stairs — to do some- 
 thing very terrible in fact — some- 
 thing deadly and horrible and final 
 that would put an end forever to 
 this melancholy haunt of Tuesday 
 stews and ghoulish boarders with 
 
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A Boarding House. 69 
 
 the torturing tattle of their ever- 
 lasting tongues. I shocked the 
 Ivittle Woman daily with words 
 and phrases, used heretofore only 
 under very trying conditions, that 
 had insensibly become the decora- 
 tions of my ordinary speech. 
 
 Clearly something had to be 
 done, and that very soon, if we 
 were to save even the remnants of 
 respectability. We recalled with 
 fondness some of the very discom- 
 forts of apartment life and said we 
 would go back to it at any cost. 
 
 Our furniture was in storage. 
 We would get it out, and we would 
 begin anew, profiting by our ex- 
 perience. We would go at once, 
 and among other things we would 
 go farther up town. So far down 
 was too noisy, besides the air was 
 not good for the Precious Ones. 
 
 It was coming on spring, too, and 
 it would be pleasanter farther up. 
 
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70 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 Not so far as we had been before, 
 but far enougb to be out of the 
 wliirl and clatter and jangle. It 
 was possible, we believed, to strike 
 tbe bappy medium, and tbis we 
 regarded somewbat in tbe ligbt of 
 anotber discovery. 
 
 Life now began to assume a new 
 interest. In tbe few remaining 
 days of our stay in tbe boarding- 
 bouse we grew tolerant and even 
 fond of our fellow-boarders, and 
 admitted tbat an endless succes- 
 sion of Tuesday stews and Wednes- 
 day basbes would make us even as 
 tbey. We went so far as to sym- 
 ; patbize beaftily witb tbe landlady, 
 v'bo wept and embraced tbe Little 
 Woman wbeu we went, and gave 
 tbe Precious Ones some indigesti- 
 ble candy. 
 
 We set fortb then, bappy in tbe 
 belief tbat we bad mastered, at last, 
 the problem of metropolitan living. 
 
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A Boarding House. 71 
 
 We had tried boarding for a change, 
 and as such it had been a success, 
 but we were altogether ready to 
 take up our stored furniture and 
 find lodgment for it, some place, 
 any place, where the bill of fare was 
 not wholly deductive, where our 
 rooms would not be made a con- 
 fessional and a scandal bureau, and 
 where we could, in some measure, 
 at least, feel that we had a " home, 
 sweet home." 
 
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72 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Pursuing the Ideal. 
 
 I SUPPOSE it was our eagerness 
 for a home that made us so 
 easy to please. 
 Looking back now after a period 
 of years on the apartment we 
 selected for our ideal nest I am at 
 a loss to recall our reasons for doing 
 so. Innocent though we were, it 
 does not seem to me that we could 
 have found in the brief time devoted 
 to the search so poor a street, so 
 wretched a place, and so disreputa- 
 ble a janitor (this time a man). I 
 only wish to recall that the place 
 was damp and small, with the 
 kitchen in front ; that some people 
 across the air shaft were wont to 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. 73 
 
 raise Cain all night long ; tliat the 
 two men below tis frequently at- 
 tempted to murder each other at 
 unseemly hours, and that some 
 extra matting and furniture stored 
 in the basement were stolen, I sus- 
 pect, by the janitor himself. 
 
 Once more we folded our tents, 
 such of them as we had left, and 
 went far up town — very far, this 
 time. We said that if we had to 
 live up town at all we would go far 
 enough to get a whiff of air from 
 fresh fields. 
 
 There was spring in the air when 
 we moved, and far above the Har- 
 lem River, where birds sang under 
 blue skies and the south breeze 
 swept into our top-floor windows, 
 we set up our household goods and 
 gods once more. They were get- 
 ting a bit shaky now, and bruised. 
 The mirrors on sideboard and 
 dresser had never been put on 
 
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74 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 twice the same, and the middle leg 
 of the dining-room table wobbled 
 from having been removed so often. 
 But we oiled out the mark and 
 memory of the moving-man, 
 bought new matting, and went into 
 the month of June fresh, clean, and 
 hopeful, with no regret for past 
 
 errors. 
 
 And now at last we found really 
 some degree of comfort. It is true 
 our neighbors were hardly congen- 
 ial, but they were inoffensive and 
 kindly disposed. The piano on 
 the floor beneath did not furnish 
 pleasing entertainment, but neither 
 was it constant in its efforts to 
 do so. The stairs were long and 
 difficult of ascent, but our distance 
 from the street was gratifying. The 
 business center was far away, but I 
 had learned to improve the time con- 
 sumed in transit, and our cool eyrie 
 was refreshing after the city heat. 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. 75 
 
 As for tlie janitor, or janitress, 
 for I do not know in whicli side of 
 tlie family tlie ofl6.ce was existent, 
 he, she, or both were merely lazy, 
 indifferent, and usually invisible. 
 Between them they managed to 
 keep the place fairly clean, and 
 willingly promised anything we 
 asked. It is true they never ful- 
 filled these obligations, but they 
 were always eager to renew them 
 with interest, and on the whole the 
 place was not at all bad. 
 
 But the Precious Ones had, by 
 this time, grown fond of change. 
 We were scarcely settled before 
 they began to ask when we were 
 going to move again, and often re- 
 quested as a favor that we take 
 them out to look at some flats. We 
 overheard them playing " flat- 
 hunting" almost every day, in 
 which game one of them would as- 
 sume the part of janitor to " show 
 
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76 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 througli " wliile the other would be 
 a prospective tenant who surveyed 
 things critically and made charac- 
 teristic remarks, such as, " How 
 many flights up ? " " How much ? " 
 " Too small," " Oh, my, kitchen's 
 too dark," " What awful paper," 
 " You don't call that closet a room, 
 I hope," and the like. It seemed a 
 harmless game, and vre did not sus- 
 pect that in a more serious form its 
 fascinations were insidiously root- 
 ing themselves in our own lives. 
 It is true we often found ourselves 
 pausing in front of new apartments 
 and wondering what they were like 
 inside, and urged by the Precious 
 Ones entered, now and then, to see 
 and inquire. In fact the Precious 
 Ones really embarrassed us some- 
 times when, on warm Sunday after- 
 noons, where people were sitting 
 out on the shady steps, they would 
 pause eagerly in front of the sign 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. yj 
 
 " To Let " with : " Oh, papa, look ! 
 Seven rooms and bath ! Oh, mam- 
 ma, let's go in and see them ! Oh, 
 please, mamma ! Please, papa ! " 
 
 At such times we hurried by, 
 oblivious to their importunities, 
 but when the situation was less 
 trying we only too frequently 
 yielded, and each time with less and 
 less reluctance. 
 
 It was in the early fall that we 
 moved again, — into a sunny corner 
 flat on a second floor that we strayed 
 into during one of these rambles, 
 and became ensnared by its clean, 
 new attractions. We said that it 
 would be better for winter, and that 
 we were tired of four long flight of 
 stairs. But, alas, by spring every- 
 thing was out of order from the 
 electric bell at the entrance to the 
 clothes-lines on the roof, while jani- 
 tors came and went like Punch and 
 Judy figures. Most of the time 
 
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yS The Van Jewellers. 
 
 we had none, and some that we had 
 were better dead. So we moved 
 when the birds came back, but it 
 was a mistake, and on the Fourth 
 of July we celebrated by moving 
 again. 
 
 We now called ourselves " van- 
 dwellers," the term applied by 
 landlord and agent to those who 
 move systematically and inhabit 
 the moving-man's great trundling 
 house no less than four to six times 
 a year. I am not sure, however, 
 that we ever really earned the title. 
 The true " van-dweller " makes 
 money by moving and getting free 
 rent, while I fear the wear and tear 
 on our chattels more than offset 
 any advantage we ever acquired in 
 this particular direction. 
 
 I can think of no reason now for 
 having taken our next flat except 
 that it was different from any of 
 those preceding. Still, it was better 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. 79 
 
 than the summer board we selected 
 from sixty answers to our advertise- 
 ment, and after eighteen minutes' 
 experience with a sweltering room 
 and an aged and apoplectic dog 
 whose quarters we seemed to have 
 usurped, we came back to it like 
 returning exiles. 
 
 It was a long time before we 
 moved again — almost four months. 
 Then the Little Woman strayed 
 into another new house, and was 
 captivated by a series of rooms that 
 ran merrily around a little ex- 
 tension in a manner that allowed 
 the sun to shine into every window. 
 
 We had become connoisseurs by 
 this time. We could tell almost 
 the exact shape and price of an 
 apartment from its outside ap- 
 pearance. After one glance inside 
 we could carry the plan mentally 
 for months and reproduce it mi- 
 nutely on paper at will. We had 
 
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8o The Van Dwellers. 
 
 learned, too, that it is only by 
 living in many houses in rotation 
 that you can know the varied charms 
 of apartment life. No one flat can 
 provide them all. 
 
 The new place had its attractions 
 and we passed a merry Christmas 
 there. Altogether our stay in it 
 was not unpleasant, in spite of the 
 soiled and soulless Teutonic lady 
 below stairs. I think we might 
 have remained longer in this place 
 but for the fact that when spring 
 came once more we were seized with 
 the idea of becoming suburbanites. 
 
 We said that a city apartment 
 after all was no place for children, 
 and that a yard of our own, and 
 green fields, must be found. With 
 the numerous quick train services 
 about New York it was altogether 
 possible to get out and in as readily 
 as from almost any point of the 
 upper metropolis, and that, after 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. 8i 
 
 all, in tlie country was the only 
 place to live. 
 
 We got nearly one hundred 
 answers to our carefully-worded 
 advertisement for a house, or part of 
 a house, within certain limits, and 
 the one selected was seemingly 
 ideal. Green fields behind it, a rail- 
 road station within easy walking 
 distance, grasshoppers singing in 
 the weeds across the road. We 
 strolled, hand in hand with the Pre- 
 cious Ones, over sweet meadows, 
 gathering dandelions and listening 
 to the birds. We had a lawn, too, 
 and sunny windows, and we felt 
 free to do as we chose in any part 
 of our domain, even in the basement, 
 for here there was no janitor. 
 
 We rejoiced in our newly-ac- 
 quired freedom, and praised every- 
 thing from the warm sunlight that 
 lay in a square on the matting of 
 every room to the rain that splashed 
 
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82 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 against the windows and trailed 
 across the waving fields. It is 
 true we had a servant now — Rosa, 
 of whom I shall speak later — but 
 even the responsibility (and it was 
 that) of this acquirement did not 
 altogether destroy our happiness. 
 Summer and autumn slipped away. 
 The Precious Ones grew tall and 
 brown, and the old cares and 
 annoyances of apartment life trou- 
 bled us no more. 
 
 But with the rigors and gloom 
 and wretchedness of winter the 
 charms of our suburban home 
 were less apparent. The matter of 
 heat became a serious question, and 
 the memory of steam radiators was 
 a haunting one. More than once 
 the Little Woman was moved to 
 refer to our " cosy little apartment " 
 of the winter before. Also, the 
 railway station seemed farther 
 away through a dark night and a 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. 83 
 
 pouring rain, the fields were gray 
 and sodden, and the grasshoppers 
 across the road were all dead. 
 
 We did not admit that we were 
 dissatisfied. In fact, we said so 
 often that we would not go back 
 to the city to live that no one could 
 possibly suspect our even consider- 
 ing such a thing. 
 
 However, we went in that direc- 
 tion one rooming when we set out for 
 a car ride, and as we passed the 
 new apartment houses of Washing- 
 ton Heights we found ourselves 
 regarding them with something 
 of the old-time interest. Of course 
 there was nothing personal in this 
 interest. It was purely professional, 
 so to speak, and we assured each 
 other repeatedly that even the best 
 apartment (we had prospered some- 
 what in the world's goods by this 
 time and we no longer spoke of 
 "flats") — that even the best " apart- 
 
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84 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 ment, then, was only an apart- 
 ment" after all, which, is true, when 
 you come to think of it. 
 
 Still, there certainly were attract- 
 ive new houses, and among them 
 appeared to be some of a different 
 pattern from any in our " collec- 
 tion." One in particular attracted 
 us, and a blockade of cars ahead 
 just then gave us time to observe 
 it more closely. 
 
 There were ornamental iron 
 gates at the front entrance, and 
 there was a spot of shells and 
 pebbles next the pavement — almost 
 a touch of seashore, and altogether 
 different from the cheerless welcome 
 of most apartment houses. Then, 
 of course, the street car passing 
 right by the door would be con- 
 venient 
 
 The blockade ahead showed no 
 sign of opening that we could see. 
 By silent but common consent we 
 
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Pursuing the Ideal. 85 
 
 rose and left the car. Past the 
 little plot of sea beach, through 
 the fancy iron gates, up to the 
 scarcely finished, daintily decor- 
 ated, latest improved apartment we 
 went, conducted by a dignified, 
 newly-uniformed colored janitor, 
 who quoted prices and inducements. 
 I looked at the Little Woman — 
 she looked at me. Bach saw 
 that the other was thinking of the 
 long, hard walk from the station 
 on dark, wet nights, the dead 
 grasshoppers, and the gray, gloomy 
 fields. We were both silent all the 
 way home, remembering the iron 
 gates, the clean janitor, the spot of 
 shells, and a beautiful palm that 
 stood in the vestibule. We were 
 both silent and we were thinking, 
 but we did not move until nearly a 
 week later. 
 
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86 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Owed to the Moving Man. 
 
 WRITTEN TO GET EVEN. 
 
 HE pledged his solemn word 
 for ten, 
 And lo, lie cometh not till 
 noon — 
 So ready his excuses then, 
 
 We wonder why he came so 
 soon. 
 He whistles while our goods and 
 gods 
 He storeth in his mighty van — 
 No lurking sting of conscience 
 prods 
 The happy-hearted moving man. 
 
 Upon the pavement in a row. 
 Beneath the cruel noonday glare, 
 
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Owed to the Moving Man. 87 
 
 The things we do not wish to show 
 He places, and he leaves them 
 there. 
 There hour by hour will they re- 
 main 
 For all the gaping world to scan, 
 The while we coax and chide in vain 
 The careless-hearted moving 
 man. 
 
 When darkness finds our poor 
 array 
 Like drift upon a barren shore, 
 Perchance we gaze on it and say 
 With vigor, " We will roam no 
 more ! " 
 But when the year its course hath 
 run. 
 And May completes the rhyth- 
 mic span. 
 Again, I wot, we'll call upon 
 The happy-hearted moving man. 
 
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88 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Household Retainers. 
 
 IT is of Rosa that I would speak 
 now, Rosa, tlie young and con- 
 suming ; and of Wilhelmine, 
 the reformer. 
 
 Rosa came first in our affections. 
 It was during our first period of 
 suburban residence that she became 
 a part of our domestic economy, 
 though on second thought economy 
 seems hardly the word. She was 
 tall, and, while you could never 
 have guessed it to look into her 
 winsome, gentle face, I am sure 
 that she was hollow all the way 
 down. 
 
 When I first gazed upon her I 
 
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Household detainers. 89 
 
 wondered why one so young (she 
 was barely sixteen), and with such 
 delicacy of feature, should have 
 been given feet so disproportionate 
 in size. I know now that they 
 were mere recesses, and that it was 
 my fate for the time being to fill, 
 or to try to fill, them. 
 
 She came in the afternoon, and 
 when, after a portion of the roast 
 had been devoted to the Precious 
 Ones and their forbears, and an 
 allotment of the pudding had been 
 issued and dallied over, Rosa came 
 on and literally demolished on a 
 dead run every hope of to-morrow's 
 stew, or hash, or a " between-meal " 
 for the Precious Ones — licked not 
 only the platter, but the vegetable 
 dishes, the gravy tureen, the bread 
 board, and the pudding pan, clean, 
 so to speak. 
 
 At first we merely smiled indul- 
 gently and said : " Poor thing, she 
 
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90 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 is half starved, and it is a pleasure 
 to have her enjoy a good meal. 
 She can't keep it up, of course." 
 
 But this was simply bad judg- 
 ment. At daybreak I hastened out 
 for a new invoice of bread stufE and 
 market supplies in order to provide 
 for immediate wants. Rosa had 
 rested well and was equal to the 
 occasion. When I returned in the 
 evening I found that our larder had 
 been replenished and wrecked twice 
 during my absence. The Little 
 Woman had a driven, hunted look 
 in her face, while Rosa was as win- 
 some and gentle-featured, as sweet 
 and placid in her consciousness of 
 well being and doing, as a cathedral 
 saint. In fact, it always seemed to 
 me that she never looked so like a 
 madonna as she did immediately 
 after destroying the better part of 
 a two-dollar roast and such other 
 trifles as chanced to be within reach 
 
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ROSA. 
 
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Household Retainers. 91 
 
 in the hour of her strong require- 
 ments. 
 
 And these things she could do 
 seven clays in the week and as many 
 times during each twenty-four 
 hours as opportunity yielded to her 
 purpose. We were hopeful for 
 days that it was only a temporary 
 disaster, and that we would event- 
 ually get her filled up, shoes and 
 all. 
 
 But days became weeks and 
 weeks gathered themselves into 
 months. Each morning Rosa 
 came up winsome and glad to be 
 alive — fresh as the dew on the 
 currant bushes and ravenous as a 
 Mohammedan at the end of Rama- 
 dan. 
 
 It was no use. We gave it up at 
 last, and merely concerned our- 
 selves with getting sufi&cient unto 
 the day and moment. 
 
 But there was another side to 
 
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92 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 Rosa. Slie was willing to take 
 counsel, in tiie matter of her labors, 
 and profit by it. Also slie bad no 
 particular aversion to work, and sbe 
 was beloved of the Precious Ones. 
 It is true sbe bad no special re- 
 gard for tbe fragility of queens- 
 ware, but care in tbese matters is 
 not expected even of old retainers ; 
 wbile Rosa, as I bave said, was in 
 tbe flower of youtb. 
 
 It was not witbout regret, there- 
 fore, that we found she could not 
 accompany us to tbe city. Her 
 people did not wish her to become 
 a part of the great metropolis in 
 early youth, and were willing to do 
 tbe best they could with her appetite 
 at home until another near-by 
 source of supplies could be found. 
 So it was that Rosa passed out of 
 our fortunes when we gave up sub- 
 urban life and became dwellers in 
 the Monte Cristo apartments. 
 
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Household Retainers. 93 
 
 It was then that Wilhelmine 
 came. The Little Woman's brother 
 Tom was to abide with us for a sea- 
 son, and it seemed necessary to have 
 somebody. I suggested that any 
 employment bureau could doubt- 
 less supply us with just what we 
 needed, and the Little Woman 
 went down to see. 
 
 I have never known exactly what 
 her experiences were there, though 
 she has done her best to tell me. 
 Her account lacked lucidity and 
 connection, but from what I can 
 gather piecemeal, she did not en- 
 joy herself. 
 
 However, the experiment result- 
 ed in something — a very old Ger- 
 man individual in a short dress, 
 stout of person, and no Bnglish 
 worth mentioning. She came on us 
 like a cyclone, and her speech was 
 as a spring torrent in volume. I 
 happened to know one or two Ger- 
 
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94 'Fhe Van Dwellers. 
 
 man words, and when incautiously 
 I chanced to let her have a look at 
 them she seized my hand and did 
 a skirt dance. Then presently she 
 ran out into the kitchen, took every- 
 thing from every shelf, and re- 
 arranged the articles in a manner 
 adapted to the uses of nothing 
 human. 
 
 This was the beginning, and re- 
 lentlessly she pursued her course, 
 backed up by a lifetime of experi- 
 ence, and the strong German tra- 
 ditions of centuries. 
 
 The entire household was re- 
 organized under her regime. The 
 Little Woman and the Precious 
 Ones were firmly directed, and I 
 was daily called to account in a 
 mixture of high-geared German and 
 splintered English that was fairly 
 amazing in its quantity. 
 
 Nothing was so trivial as to es- 
 cape Wilhelmine. Like all great 
 
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Household Retainers. 95 
 
 generals, she regarded even the 
 minutest details as important, and 
 I was handled with no less severity 
 for cutting an extra slice of bread 
 than for investing in a new rug 
 for the front room. For, let it be 
 said now, Wilhelmine was eco- 
 nomical and abhorred waste. Nei- 
 ther did she break the crockery, 
 and, unlike Rosa, she did not eat. 
 She was no longer young and grow- 
 ing, and the necessity of coaling- 
 up every hour or two seemed to 
 have gone by. 
 
 But, alas ! we would have pre- 
 ferred beautiful, young, careless, 
 larder-wrecking Rosa to Wilhel- 
 mine, the reformer. We would 
 have welcomed her with joy, and 
 surreptitiously in whispers we 
 hatched plots to rid ourselves of 
 the tyrant. Once I even went so far 
 as to rebel and battle with her in the 
 very sanctity of the kitchen itself. 
 
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96 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 Not that Wilhelmine could not 
 cook. In her own German cab- 
 bage-and-onion way she was re- 
 sourceful, and the house reeked 
 with her combinations until strong 
 men shed tears, and even the jani- 
 tor hurried by our door with bowed 
 head. I never questioned her abil- 
 ity to cook, but in the matter of 
 coffee she was hopeless. In the 
 best German I could muster I told 
 her so. I told her so several times, 
 so that it could sink in. I said it 
 over forward and backward and side- 
 ways, in order to get the verbs 
 right, and when she was through 
 denouncing me I said that I would 
 give her an object lesson in mak- 
 ing coffee in a French pot. 
 
 I am sure now that this was a 
 mistake — that German blood could 
 stand almost anything in the world 
 better than a French coffeepot, 
 but at the time I did not recall 
 
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Household Retainers. 97 
 
 the affairs and animosities of na- 
 tions. 
 
 I had otlier things to think of. I 
 was employed in the delicate opera- 
 tion of extracting amber nectar 
 by a tedious dripping process, 
 and simultaneously engaging with 
 a rapid-fire German at short range. 
 I understood very little of what 
 she said, and what I did gather 
 was not complimentary. I fired a 
 volley or two at last myself, and 
 then retreated in good order bear- 
 ing the coffee-pot. 
 
 The coffee was a success, but it 
 was obtained at too great a risk. 
 That night we wrote to Rosa and 
 to her mother. We got no reply, 
 and, after days of anxious waiting, 
 the Little Woman went out to dis- 
 cuss the situation in person. But 
 the family had moved, and there 
 had been a very heavy snow. The 
 Little Woman waded about nearly 
 7 
 
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98 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 all day in pursuit of the new ad- 
 dress. SHe learned it at last, but it 
 was too late then to go any farther, 
 so she came home and wrote again, 
 only to get no reply. Then I tried 
 my hand in the matter as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 LINES TO ROSA IN ABSENCE. 
 
 Lady Rosa Vere de Smith, 
 
 Leave your kin and leave your kith ; 
 
 Life without you is a mockery ; 
 
 Come once more and rend our crockery. 
 
 Lady Rosa Vere de Smith, 
 
 Life for us has lost its pith ; 
 
 You taught us how to prize you thus. 
 
 And now you will not bide with us. 
 
 Lady Rosa Vere de Smith, 
 Have we no voice to reach you with ? 
 Come once more and wreck our larder ; 
 We will welcome you with ardor. 
 
 I could have written more of this, 
 perhaps, and I still believe it would 
 have proved effective, but when I 
 
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Household Retainers. 99 
 
 read aloud as far as written, the 
 lyittle Woman announced that she 
 would rather do without Rosa for- 
 ever than to let a thing like that ' 
 go through the mails. So it was 
 suppressed, and Rosa was lost to 
 us, I fear, for all time. 
 
 But Providence had not entirely 
 forgotten us, though its ways as 
 usual were inscrutable. Wilhel- 
 mine, it seems, locked herself 
 nightly in her room, and the locks 
 being noiseless in the Monte Cristo 
 apartments she could not realize 
 when the key turned that she was 
 really safely barred in. Hence it 
 seems she continued to twist at 
 the key which, being of a slender 
 pattern, was one night wrenched 
 apart and Wilhelmine, alas ! was 
 only too surely fortified in her 
 stronghold. When she realized 
 this she, of course, became wildly 
 vociferous. 
 
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loo The Van Dwellers. 
 
 I heard the outburst and hasten- 
 ing back found her declaring that 
 she was lost without a doubt. 
 That the house would certainly 
 catch fire before she was released 
 and that she would be burned like 
 a rat in a trap. 
 
 I called to her reassuringly, but 
 it did no good. Then I climbed up 
 on a chair set on top of a table, 
 and observed her over the transom. 
 She had her wardrobe tied in a 
 bundle all ready for the fire which 
 she assured me was certain to 
 come, though how she hoped to 
 get her wardrobe out when she 
 could not get herself out, or of 
 what use it would be to her after- 
 wards was not clear. 
 
 It was useless to persuade her 
 to go to bed and let me get a lock- 
 smith in the morning. I was con- 
 vinced that she would carry-on all 
 night like a forgotten dachshund, 
 
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Household Retainers, loi 
 
 unless she was released. It was 
 too late to find a locksmith and I 
 did not wish to take the janitor 
 into the situation. 
 
 I got a screw-driver and handed 
 it over to her telling her to unscrew 
 the lock. But by this time she 
 had reached a state where she did 
 not know one end of the imple- 
 ment from another. She merely 
 looked at it helplessly and contin- 
 ued to leap about and bewail her 
 fate loudly and in mixed tongues. 
 
 I saw at last that I must climb 
 over the transom. It was small, 
 and I am a large man. I looked at 
 the size of it and then considered 
 my height and shoulder measure. 
 Then I made the effort. 
 
 I could not go through feet first, 
 and to go through a transom head 
 first is neither dignified or exhilarat- 
 ing. When I was something more 
 than half through I pawed about 
 
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I02 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 in the air head down in a vain 
 effort to reach a little chiffonier in 
 Wilhelmine's room. 
 
 She watched me with interest to 
 see how near I could come to it, and 
 by some mental process it dawned 
 upon her at last that she could help 
 matters by pushing it toward me. 
 Having reached this conclusion the 
 rest was easy, for she was as strong 
 as an ox and swung the furniture 
 toward me like a toy. 
 
 Five minutes later I had un- 
 screwed the lock and Wilhelmine 
 was free. So were we, for when I 
 threw the lock into a drawer with a 
 few choice German remarks which 
 I had been practising for just such 
 an emergency, Wilhelmine seized 
 upon her bundles, already packed, 
 and, vowing that she would abide in 
 no place where she could not lie 
 down in the security of strong and 
 hard twisting keys, she disappeared, 
 
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Household Retainers. 103 
 
 strewing the stairway with Ger- 
 man verbs and expletives in her 
 departure. 
 
 We saw her no more, and in two 
 weeks, by constant airing, we had 
 our culinary memories of her re- 
 duced to such a degree that the 
 flat on the floor above found a ten- 
 ant, and carbolic acid was no long- 
 er needed in the halls. 
 
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I04 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Ann. 
 
 AND now came Ann, Ann, the 
 Hibernian and the minstrel. 
 During the first week of her 
 abode with us she entertained us 
 at dinner by singing a weird Irish 
 love ballad and so won our hearts 
 that the Ivittle Woman decided to 
 take the Precious Ones for a brief 
 visit to homes and firesides in the 
 Far West, leaving her Brother 
 Tom and myself in Ann's charge. 
 When she went away she beamed 
 upon Tom and me and said, reassur- 
 ingly, " Ann will take good care of 
 you all right. We were fortunate 
 to secure a girl like Ann on such 
 short notice. Get your lunches 
 
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Ann. 105 
 
 outside sometimes ; that will please 
 her." Then she and the Precious 
 Ones kissed us both, the bell rang 
 and they were gone. 
 
 My brother-in-law and I were 
 doing what we referred to as " our 
 book " at this time, and were in- 
 terested to the point of absorption. 
 Ann the Hibernian therefore had 
 the household — at least, the back of 
 the household — pretty much to her- 
 self. 
 
 I do not know just when the 
 falling off did begin. We were 
 both very much taken up with our 
 wprk. But when, one morning, I 
 happened to notice that it was a 
 quarter of twelve when we sat down 
 to a breakfast of stale bread and 
 warmed-over coffee, it occurred to 
 me that there was a hitch some- 
 where in our system. 
 
 That evening, when it got too 
 dark to work, I arose and drifted 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
io6 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 out to the kitclien, perhaps with 
 some idea of being hungry, and a 
 mild curiosity to know when dinner 
 might be expected. There was an 
 air of desolation aboiit the place 
 that seemed strange, and an odor 
 that seemed familiar. Like a 
 hound on the trail I followed the 
 latter straight on through the 
 kitchen, to the servants' room at 
 the back. The door was ajar, and 
 the mystery was solved. Our 
 noble Ann had fallen prey to the 
 cup that yearly sweeps thousands 
 into unhonored graves. 
 
 We went out for dinner, and the 
 next morning we got our own eggs 
 and coffee. When our minion re- 
 gained consciousness we reviled her 
 and cast her out. 
 
 We said we would get our own 
 meals. We had camped out to- 
 gether and taken turns at the cook- 
 ing. We would camp out now in 
 
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Ann. 107 
 
 the flat. We were quite elated 
 witii fhe idea, and out of the ful- 
 ness of our freedom gave Ann a 
 dollar and a little bracer out of some 
 " private stock." Ann declared we 
 were " pairfect gintlemen," and for 
 the first time seemed sorry to go. 
 
 Both being eager to get back to 
 our work after breakfast, neither 
 of us referred to the dirty dishes, 
 and I did not remember them again 
 until dinner time. Tom got into 
 a tangle with our heroine about 
 one o'clock, and said he would get 
 the lunch by way of relaxation. I 
 presume he relaxed sufficiently 
 / without attending to the plates. 
 At least, I found them untouched 
 when I went out to look after the 
 dinner. 
 
 I discovered, also, that the lavish 
 Tom had exhausted the commis- 
 sary to achieve the lunch. I was 
 obliged, therefore, to go at once to 
 
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io8 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 tlie grocery, and on the way made 
 up a mental list of tlie things easi- 
 est to prepare. I would get canned 
 things, I said, as many of these 
 were ready for the table, and some 
 of them could be eaten out of the 
 can. This would save dishes. I 
 do not recall now just what I had 
 planned as my bill of fare, but I sup- 
 pose I must have forgotten some of 
 it when I learned that our grocer 
 was closing out his stock of wet 
 goods very cheap, for Tom looked 
 at the stuff when it came and asked 
 if I thought of running a bar. I 
 said I had bought with a view to 
 saving dishes. Then he hunted 
 up the cork-screw and we dined. 
 
 In spite of my superior manage- 
 ment, however, the dish pile in the 
 kitchen sink grew steadily. 
 
 On the morning of the third day 
 the china closet was exhausted, and 
 we took down the Little Woman's 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Ann. 109 
 
 Crown Derby and blue India plates 
 from tbeir bangers in tbe parlor. 
 
 On the evening of tbe fourth 
 day Tom got our work into an in- 
 extricable tangle, and took a re- 
 flective stroll out into tbe kitcben. 
 He came back looking hopelessly 
 discouraged. On the fifth morn- 
 ing we followed Ann's example. 
 
 Tbe atmosphere suddenly cleared 
 now. We reached conclusions 
 by amazingly short cuts, and 
 our troubles vanished like the 
 dew of morning. The next day 
 would be Sunday. We would go 
 into the country for recreation. 
 To-night we would put a line in 
 the paper and on Monday morning 
 we would have another servant. It 
 seemed hardly worth our while to 
 attempt to camp out permanently. 
 
 I will pass over Sunday without 
 further comment. The recollection 
 is weird and extravagant. I re- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 1 o The Van Dwellers, 
 
 member being surprised at finding 
 certain stretches of pavement per- 
 pendicular, and of trying to climb 
 them. Still we must have got a line 
 in the paper on Saturday night, for 
 on Monday the bell began ringing 
 violently before we were up. Tom 
 either did not hear it, or was wilful- 
 ly iinconscious. Finally I got up 
 wretchedly and dragged on some 
 garments. There was no ice, so I 
 pressed my head for a few minutes 
 to a marble-topped center table. 
 
 I suppose it was because I did 
 not feel very bright that the voices 
 of my guests were not restful to 
 me. I was almost irritated by one 
 shrill-voiced creature who insisted 
 on going through every room, 
 even to our study. Her tone was 
 dictatorial and severe. Still I 
 might have retained her had she 
 not commented disagreeably on the 
 dishes in the kitchen sink. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Ann. Ill 
 
 One after another they followed 
 her example. Every woman of 
 them began to make excuses and 
 back away when she looked at that 
 unwashed china. Most of them 
 perjured themselves with the 
 statement that they had come 
 to see about a place for another 
 girl. 
 
 After the initial lot they scat- 
 tered along through the forenoon. 
 Tom had got up, meantime, and 
 was leaning on the front window- 
 sill watching hungrily for the ice- 
 man. 
 
 In the midst of this anguish the 
 bell rang once more, timidly and 
 with evident hesitation, and a 
 moment later I feebly opened the 
 door to admit — Ann ! 
 
 She was neatly dressed, as when 
 she had first come to us, and there 
 were other gratifying indications 
 of reform. 
 
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112 The Van Divellers. 
 
 " Sure an' I saw your advertise- 
 ment," she began, humbly, " an' I 
 tbougbt two sucb gintlemen as 
 yerselves moight not be too hard on 
 a daycent woman who only takes a 
 drop or two now an' then " 
 
 I led her back to the kitchen and 
 pointed to the sink. As we passed 
 through the dining-room she no- 
 ticed the empty bottles on the 
 table and crossed herself. When 
 she looked at the kitchen sink she 
 exclaimed, " Holy Mary ! " But 
 she did not desert us. Her charity 
 was greater than ours. 
 
 I went in to tell Tom of the ren- 
 ovation and general reform that 
 was about to begin. He had just 
 succeeded in hailing the ice-man 
 and was feeling better. When I 
 went back into the kitchen there 
 was a wash-boiler of water heating 
 on the range. 
 
 Just then the postman whistled 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Ann. 1 1 3 
 
 and brought a letter from the 
 Little Woman. 
 
 " I have decided to stay a week 
 longer than I intended," she wrote. 
 " It is so pleasant here, and Ann, I 
 am sure, is taking good care of you." 
 We had a confidential under- 
 standing with Ann that night. 
 She remained with us a year after- 
 ward, and during that time the 
 sacred trust formed by the three of 
 us was not betrayed. 
 8 
 
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1 14 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 X. 
 
 A "FlaV Failure. 
 
 IN the Monte Cristo apartments 
 it would seem that we had 
 found harbor at last. Days 
 ran into weeks, v/eeks to months, 
 and these became a year, at length 
 — the first we had passed under 
 any one roof. Then there came 
 a change. The house was not so 
 well built as it had appeared, and 
 with the beginning of decay there 
 came also a change of landlord and 
 janitor. Our spruce and not un- 
 worthy colored man was replaced 
 by one Thomas, who was no less 
 spruce, indeed, but as much more 
 severe in his discipline as his good- 
 natured employer was lax in the 
 matter of needed repairs. 
 
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A ''Flat'' Failure. 115 
 
 Bvery evening, at length, when 
 we gathered about the dinner table, 
 the Little Woman recited to me the 
 story of her day's wrongs. They 
 were many and various, but they 
 may be summed iip in the two 
 words — janitor and landlord. The 
 arrogance of one and the negli- 
 gence of the other were rapidly mak- 
 ing life in the Monte Cristo apart- 
 ments insupportable. Of course 
 there were minor annoyances — 
 the children across the hall, for 
 instance, and the maid in the 
 kitchen — but these faded into in- 
 significance when contrasted with 
 the leaky plumbing, sagging doors, 
 rattling windows and the like on 
 the part of Mr. Griffin, the landlord, 
 and new arbitrary rulings concern- 
 ing the supply of steam for the 
 parlor, coal for the kitchen range, 
 the taking away of refuse, and the 
 austere stairway restrictions im- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 1 6 The Van "Dwellers. 
 
 posed upon our Precious Ones on 
 the part of Thomas, the janitor. 
 
 It is true the landlord was not 
 over-exacting in the matter of rent, 
 and when he came about, which 
 was not often, would promise any- 
 thing and everything with the 
 greatest good-will in the world, 
 while Thomas kept the front steps 
 and halls in a condition which was 
 really better than we had been 
 used to, or than the rent schedule 
 would ordinarily justify. But the 
 good-will of the landlord usually 
 went no farther than his ready 
 promises, while the industry of 
 Thomas was overshadowed by his 
 gloomy discipline and haughty 
 severity, which presently made 
 him, if not the terror, certainly the 
 awe, of Monte Cristo dwellers. 
 We had not minded this so much, 
 however, until when one day the 
 Precious Ones paused on the stair 
 
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A '^ Flat" Failure. \ij 
 
 a moment to rest, as was their wont, 
 and were perhaps even laughing in 
 their childish and musical way, 
 Thomas, who had now been with 
 us some three months or more, 
 appeared suddenly from some con- 
 cealed lurking-place and ordered 
 them to their own quarters, with a 
 warning against a repetition of the 
 offense that seemed unduly somber. 
 It frightened the Precious Ones so 
 thoroughly that they were almost 
 afraid to pass through the halls 
 alone next day, and came and went 
 quite on a run, looking neither to 
 the right nor to the left. 
 
 It was then that we said we would 
 go. Of course, moving was not 
 pleasant ; we had enough memories 
 in that line already, though time 
 had robbed them of their bitterness, 
 I suppose, for we grew quite cheer- 
 ful over the idea of seeking a new 
 abiding-place, and it being Sunday, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 1 8 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 began looking over the advertise- 
 ment columns immediately after 
 breakfast. I would make a list, I 
 said, and stop in here and tbere to 
 investigate on tke way to and from 
 business. We would get nearer 
 to business, for one thing, also 
 nearer the car-line. We would 
 have a lighter flat, too, and we 
 would pay less for it. We agreed 
 upon these things almost instantly. 
 Then we began putting down ad- 
 dresses. It was surprising how 
 many good, cheap places there 
 seemed to be now. So many new 
 houses had been built since our last 
 move. We regretted openly to each 
 other that we had not gone before. 
 Then we rested a little to find 
 fault with our quarters. We dug 
 over all the old things, and un- 
 earthed a lot of new and hither- 
 to concealed wretchedness that 
 was altogether disheartening. We 
 
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A ''Flat'" Failure. 119 
 
 would move at once, we said. 
 Now ! This week ! 
 
 Perhaps I seemed a trifle less 
 cheerful when I returned next 
 evening. The Little Woman must 
 have noticed it, I suppose, for she 
 asked if I wasn't well. I said that 
 I was tired, which was true. I 
 added that a good many landlords 
 were unscrupulous in the matter 
 of advertising, which I can take an 
 oath is also true. I had left the 
 office early and investigated a num- 
 ber of the apartments on my list, 
 at the expense of some nerve-tissue 
 and considerable car-fare. The 
 advertisements had been more or 
 less misleading. The Little Wom- 
 an said that in the morning she 
 would go. 
 
 The Little Woman herself looked 
 tired the next evening — more tired 
 and several years older than I had 
 ever seen her look. She had 
 
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I20 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 walked a good many miles — steep 
 stair miles wliicli are trying. In 
 the end she had arrived only at 
 the conclusion that the best apart- 
 ments were not advertised. She 
 said it would be better to select the 
 locality we preferred and walk lei- 
 surely about the good streets until 
 we spied something attractive. She 
 wished we might do so together. 
 
 I took a holiday and we pursued 
 this programme. Like birds seek- 
 ing a new nesting-place we flitted 
 hither and thither, alighting where- 
 soever the perch seemed inviting. 
 We alighted in many places, but 
 in most o£ them we tarried but 
 briefly. It was not that the apart- 
 ments were inattractive — they were 
 almost irresistible, some of them, 
 but even hasty reflection convinced 
 me that it would be inadvisable to 
 invest ninety-five per cent of my 
 salary each month in rent unless I 
 could be altogether certain that the 
 
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A "Flat" Failure. 121 
 
 Little Woman and the Precious 
 Ones could modify their appetites 
 and remain quite well. 
 
 Being enthusiastic at first, we 
 examined some of these apartments 
 and the lyittle Woman acquired 
 credit in my eyes as we proceeded. 
 I did not realize until now the prog- 
 ress she had made since the day of 
 our arrival in Gotham nearly four 
 years previous. Her education 
 was complete — she was a graduate 
 in the great school of flat-life, and 
 was contemplating a post-graduate 
 course. Figures that made me 
 gasp and sustain myself by the 
 silver-mounted plumbing left her 
 quite undisturbed. From her man- 
 ner you would suppose that it 
 was only the desirability of the 
 apartment itself that was worth 
 consideration. She criticised the 
 arrangement of the rooms and the 
 various appointments with an air of 
 real consequence, while the janitor 
 
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122 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 and I followed her about, humble 
 and unimportant, wondering how we 
 could ever have imagined the place 
 suitable to her requirements. 
 
 In one place where the rent was 
 twenty-four hundred it seemed al- 
 most impossible to find fault. I be- 
 gan to be frightened for the lyittle 
 Woman, in the thought that now, 
 after all, she really would be 
 obliged to confess that the little 
 trifle of eighteen hundred dollars a 
 year more than we could possibly 
 pay rendered the place undesirable. 
 But a moment later I realized how 
 little I knew her. When we got 
 to the kitchen she remarked, 
 passively, there was no morning 
 sun in the windows. As the apart- 
 ment faced east, and there was 
 morning sun in the parlor, this 
 condition seemed more or less 
 normal, as the janitor meekly 
 pointed out. But the Little Woman 
 
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A "Flat Failure." 123 
 
 declared she would never live in 
 another place where the kitchen 
 was dark mornings, and turned 
 away, leaving the janitor scratching 
 his head over the problem of mak- 
 ing the sun shine from two direc- 
 tions at once and remaining in that 
 position all day long. 
 
 Still it was a narrow escape, and 
 we were consuming time. So we 
 contented ourselves after that with 
 merely inquiring the size and price 
 of the apartment of the hall-boy, 
 and passing on. Kven this grew 
 monotonous at length, and we 
 gradually drifted into the outer 
 edges of the chosen district, and 
 from the outer edges into that 
 Section wherein we had made our 
 first beginning nearly four years 
 before, the great wilderness lying 
 north of One Hundred and Six- 
 teenth Street. Then we began 
 work in earnest. We looked 
 
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124 '^^ ^'^^ 'Dwellers. 
 
 '^ at light apartments and dark apart- 
 ments — apartments on every floor, 
 even to the basement. Though 
 many changes had taken place it 
 carried us back to the day of our 
 first experience, and set us to 
 wondering if we really had learned 
 anything after all. 
 
 We saw apartments that we would 
 not have, and apartments which, 
 because of our Precious Ones, would 
 not have us. Apartments that 
 ran straight through the house, 
 apartments that, running down 
 one side of the house and back on 
 the other, solved in a manner the 
 Little Woman's problem of having 
 sunlight in both ends of the house 
 at one time. 
 
 It was one of these last that we 
 took. The building, which was 
 comparatively new, was located in 
 the middle of the block, on a little 
 square bit of ground, and had on 
 
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A "Flat Failure." 125 
 
 each floor a cozy octagonal hall 
 with one apartment running en- 
 tirely around it. The entrance 
 steps and halls were not as unsul- 
 lied as those of our present habitat, 
 but the janitor was a good-natured 
 soul who won us at first glance, 
 and who seemed on terms of the 
 greatest amity with a small boy 
 who lived on the first landing and 
 accompanied us through. We saw 
 also that the plumbing was in 
 praiseworthy condition, and the 
 doors swung easily on their hinges. 
 To be sure, the price was a trifle 
 more than we were paying in our 
 present apartment, and the location 
 was somewhat farther from busi- 
 ness ; but we said that a few blocks 
 more or less were really nothing 
 when one was once on the car, 
 which was almost as near as at the 
 old place, and we figured that the 
 slight difference in rent we could 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
126 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 save in the gas-bill, thougli I had 
 a lingering suspicion that to strike 
 a general average of light in the 
 two places would be to cast but 
 slight reflection on either. 
 
 The janitor was the main thing 
 — the good-natured janitor and the 
 landlord. We could even put up 
 with slight drawbacks for the sake 
 of an apartment in good condition 
 and the companionable soul down- 
 stairs. Then, too, we were foot- 
 sore in flesh and spirit, and after 
 the day's experiences welcomed this 
 haven as a genuine discovery. 
 We went home really gratified, 
 though I confess our old nest had 
 never seemed more inviting. 
 
 I will touch but lightly upon 
 the next few days. I would rather 
 forget the atmosphere of squalor 
 and destitution that pervaded our 
 household when the carpets had 
 been stripped up and we were stum- 
 
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A ''Flat Failure" 127 
 
 bling about among half-packed bar- 
 rels upon bare, resounding floors. 
 I do not seek to retrace in detail 
 tbe process of packing, whicli began 
 witk some buoyancy and system, 
 to degenerate at last in its end- 
 lessness into dropping things me- 
 chanically and hopelessly into 
 whatever receptacle came first to 
 hand. I do not wish to renew the 
 moments of vehemence and exas- 
 peration when our Precious Ones, 
 who really seemed to enjoy it all, 
 clattered about among the d6bris, or 
 the vague appreciation of suicide 
 that was born within me when, in 
 the midst of my despair, the Little 
 Woman suggested that after all she 
 was afraid we were making a mis- 
 take in leaving our little home 
 where we had been happy so long ; 
 also that we moved too often, an 
 unusual statement considering the 
 fact that we had been there for more 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
128 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 than a year. I told her that she 
 reminded me of my mother, who 
 daily rated my father for keeping 
 them poor, moving, they having 
 moved twice in thirty-eight years. 
 I added that I had seen my mother 
 publicly denounce my father for 
 having left out a broken stew-pot 
 when they moved the last time, 
 some twenty years before. 
 
 I will not review these things 
 fully, nor will I recall, except in the 
 briefest manner, the usual perfidi- 
 ousness of the moving-man, who, as 
 heretofore, came two hours late, and 
 then arranged upon the pavement 
 all the unbeauteous articles of our 
 household, leaving them bare and 
 wretched in the broad light of day 
 while he thrust into the van the 
 pieces of which we were j ustly proud. 
 
 I will also skim but lightly over 
 the days devoted to getting settled. 
 I sent word to the o£&ce that I was 
 
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A "Flat Failure." 129 
 
 ill — a fact which I could have sworn 
 to if necessary, though for a sick 
 man my activity was quite remark- 
 able. The Little Woman was act- 
 ive, too, while the Precious Ones 
 displayed a degree of enterprise 
 and talent for getting directly in 
 my chosen, path, which was unusal 
 even for them. 
 
 We were installed at last, how- 
 ever, and the jolly janitor had given 
 us a lift now and then which com- 
 pletely won our hearts and more 
 than made up for some minor short- 
 comings which we discovered here 
 and there as the days passed. We 
 named our new home the " Sun- 
 shine " apartment and assured each 
 other that we were very well pleased, 
 and when one morning as I set out 
 for the ofl&ce I noticed that the lower 
 halls and stairway had suddenly 
 taken on an air of spruce tidiness 
 — had been magically transformed 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
13° The Van Dwellers. 
 
 over nigHt, as it were — I was so 
 elated that I returned to point these 
 things out to the Little Woman. 
 She came down to the door with 
 me and agreed that it was quite 
 wonderful, and added the final touch 
 to our satisfaction. She added that 
 it looked almost as if Thomas had 
 been at work there. I went away 
 altogether happy. 
 
 Owing to the accumulation of 
 work at the office it was rather lat- 
 er than usual when I returned 
 that evening. As I entered I ob- 
 served on the face of the Little 
 Woman a peculiar look which did 
 not seem altogether due to the de- 
 layed dinner. The Precious Ones 
 also regarded me strangely, and 
 I grew vaguely uneasy without 
 knowing why. It was our elder 
 hope who first addressed me. 
 
 " Oh, pop ! you can't guess who's 
 here ! " 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
A "Flat" Failure. 131 
 
 " No," chimed in the echo, " you 
 never could ! Guess, papa ; just 
 guess ! " 
 
 As for the Little Woman, she 
 leaned back in her chair and began 
 laughing hysterically. This was 
 alarming. I knew it could not be 
 her brother who had just sailed for 
 Japan, and I glanced about nervous- 
 ly, having in mind a composite vis- 
 ion of my Aunt Jane, who had once 
 invaded our home with disastrous 
 results, and an old college chum, 
 who only visited me when in finan- 
 cial distress. 
 
 " Wh— where are— they ? " I half 
 whispered, regarding anxiously the 
 portieres. 
 
 " Here — up-stairs, down-stairs, 
 everywhere ! " gasped the Little 
 Woman, while the Precious Ones 
 continued to insist that I guess and 
 keep on guessing without rest or 
 sustenance till the crack of doom. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
132 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 Then suddenly I grew quite 
 stern. 
 
 "Tell me," I commanded, " what 
 is the matter with you people, and 
 stop this nonsense ! Who is it 
 that's here ? " 
 
 The Little Woman became calm 
 for a brief instant, and emitted a 
 single word. " Thomas ! " 
 
 I sank weakly into a chair. 
 "Thomas?" 
 
 " Yes, Thomas ! Thomas ! " 
 shrieked the Precious Ones, and 
 then they, too, went off into a fit of 
 ridiculous mirth, while recalling 
 now the sudden transfiguration of 
 the halls I knew they had spoken 
 truly. The Little Woman was 
 wiping her eyes. 
 
 " And Mr. Grifl&n, too," she said, 
 calmly, as if that was quite a mat- 
 ter of course. 
 
 " And Mr. Griffin, too ! " 
 chorused the Precious Ones. 
 
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A ""Flat" Failure. 133 
 
 "Mr. Griffin?" 
 
 "Why, yes," said the Little 
 Woman. " He bought this house 
 yesterday, and put Thomas over 
 here in charge. He will occupy 
 the top floor himself." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " And you never saw anybody so 
 glad of anything as Thomas was to 
 see us here. It was the first time 
 I ever saw him laugh ! " 
 
 "Oh, he laughed, did he?" 
 
 " Yes ; and he gave us each some 
 candy ! " chanted the Precious 
 Ones. " He said it was like meet- 
 ing home folks." 
 
 "Oh, he did?" 
 
 "Mine was chocolate," declared 
 our elder joy. 
 
 " Mine was marshmallows ! " 
 piped the echo. 
 
 " Little Woman," I said, " our 
 dinner is getting cold ; suppose we 
 eat it." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
I 34 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 XL 
 
 Inheritance and Mania. 
 
 AND now came one of these epi- 
 sodes which sometimes dis- 
 turb the-sequestered quiet of 
 even the best regulated and most 
 conventional of households. We 
 were notified one day that my Aunt 
 Jane, whom I believe I have once 
 before mentioned having properly 
 arranged her affairs had passed 
 serenely out of life at an age and 
 in a manner that left nothing to 
 be desired. 
 
 I was sorry, of course, — as sorry 
 as it was possible to be, considering 
 the fact that she had left me a Sum 
 which though not large was ab- 
 surdly welcome. I did not sleep 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 135 
 
 very well until it came, fearing 
 there miglit be some hitch in 
 administrating the will, but there 
 was no hitch (my Aunt Jane, heaven 
 rest her spirit, had been too thor- 
 oughly business for that) and the 
 Sum came along in due season. 
 
 We would keep this Sum, we 
 decided, as a sinking fund ; some- 
 thing to have in the savings bank, 
 to be added to, from time to time, as 
 a provision for the future and our 
 Precious Ones. This seemed a 
 good idea at the time, and it seems 
 so yet, for that matter. I have 
 never been able to discover that 
 there is anything wrong with hav- 
 ing money in a good savings bank. 
 
 I put the Sum in a good savings 
 bank, and we were briefly satisfied 
 with our prudence. It gave us a 
 sort of safe feeling to know that it 
 was there, to be had almost in- 
 stantly, in case of need. 
 
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136 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 It was this latter knowledge 
 that destroyed us. When the 
 novelty of feeling safe had worn 
 off we began to need the Sum. 
 Casually at first, coming as a mere 
 suggestion, in fact, from one or 
 the other of us, of what we could 
 buy with it. It is wonderful how 
 many things we were constantly 
 seeing that the Sum would pay for. 
 
 Our furniture, for instance, had 
 grown old without becoming an- 
 tique, and was costly only when 
 you reckon what we had paid for 
 moving it. We had gradually ac- 
 quired a taste (or it may have been 
 only the need of a taste) for the 
 real thing. Whatever it was it 
 seemed expensive — too expensive 
 to be gratified heretofore, but now 
 that we had the Sum 
 
 The shops along Fourth Avenue 
 were literally bulging with things 
 that we coveted and that the Sum, 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. I37 
 
 would pay for. I looked at them 
 wistfully in passing, still passing 
 strong in my resolution to let tlie 
 
 ' Sum lie untouched. Then I began 
 to linger and go in, and to imagine 
 that I knew a good piece and a bar- 
 gain when I saw it. This last may 
 be set down as a fatal symptom. It 
 led me into vile second-hand stores 
 in the hope of finding some hitherto 
 undiscovered treasure. In these I 
 hauled over the wretched jetsam of 
 a thousand cheap apartments and 
 came out dusty and contaminated 
 but not discouraged. 
 
 I suggested to the Little Woman 
 
 I one day that it would be in the 
 nature of an investment to buy 
 now, in something old and good, 
 the desk I had needed so long. I 
 assured her that antiques were be- 
 coming scarcer each year, and that 
 pieces bought to-day were quite as 
 good as money in the savings bank, 
 
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13,8 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 besides having tlie use of them. 
 The I/ittle Woman agreed readily. 
 For a long time she had wanted me 
 to have a desk, and my argument 
 in favor of an antique piece seemed 
 sound. 
 
 I did not immediately find a desk 
 that suited me. There were a 
 great many of them, and most of 
 them seemed sufi&ciently antique, 
 but being still somewhat modern 
 in my ideas I did not altogether 
 agree with their internal arrange- 
 ments, while such as did appeal 
 would have made too large an in- 
 cursion into the Sum, What I did 
 find at length was a table — a ma- 
 hogany veneered table which the 
 dealer said was of a period before 
 the war. I could readily believe it. 
 If he had said that it had been 
 through the war I could have be- 
 lieved that, too. It looked it. But 
 I saw in it possibilities, and re- 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 139 
 
 fleeted fhat it would give me an 
 opportunity to develop a certain 
 mechanical turn which had lain 
 dormant hitherto. The Little 
 Woman had been generous in the 
 matter of the desk. I would buy 
 the table for the Little Woman. 
 
 She was pleased, of course, but 
 seemed to me she regarded it a 
 trifle doubtfully when it came in. 
 Still, the price had not been great, 
 and it was astonishing to see how 
 much better it looked when I was 
 through with it, and it was in a 
 dim corner, with its more unfortu- 
 nate portions next the wall. In- 
 deed, it had about it quite an air 
 of genuine respectability, and made 
 the rest of our things seem poor 
 and trifling. It was the beginning 
 of the end. 
 
 Some Colonial chairs came next. 
 
 The Little Woman and I dis- 
 covered their battered skeletons 
 
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14° The Van Dwellers. 
 
 one day as we were hurrying to 
 catch a car. They were piled in 
 front of a place that under ordi- 
 nary conditions we would have 
 shunned as a pest-house. Still the 
 chairs were really beautiful and it 
 was a genuine " find"! I did not 
 restore these myself — they needed 
 too much. I had them delivered 
 to a cabinet-maker who in turn de- 
 livered them to us in a condition 
 that made the rest of our belong- 
 ings look even shabbier, and at a 
 cost that made another incursion 
 into the Sum. 
 
 I renovated and upholstered the 
 next lot of chairs myself, and was 
 proud of the result, though the 
 work was attended by certain un- 
 pleasant features, and required 
 time. On the whole, I concluded 
 to let the cabinet-maker undertake 
 the heavy lounge that came next, 
 and was in pieces, as if a cyclone 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 141 
 
 had struck it somewhere back in 
 the forties and it had been lying in 
 a heap, ever since. It was won- 
 derful what he did with it. It 
 came to us a thing of beauty and an 
 everlasting joy, and his bill made 
 a definite perforation in the Sum. 
 
 We did not mind so much now. 
 It was merely altering the form of 
 our investment, we said, and we 
 had determined to become respect- 
 able at any cost. The fact that 
 we had been offered more for the 
 restored lounge than it cost us re- 
 assured us in our position. Most 
 of our old traps we huddled to- 
 gether one day, and disposed of 
 them to a second-hand man for al- 
 most enough to pay for one decent 
 piece — a chiffonier this time — and 
 voted a good riddance to bad rub- 
 bish. 
 
 Reflecting upon this now, it 
 seems to me we were a bit hasty 
 
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142 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 and unkind. Poor though they 
 were, the old things had served us 
 well and gone with us through the 
 ups and downs of many apartments. 
 In some of them we had rocked the 
 Precious Ones, and on most of 
 them the precious Ones had tried 
 the strength and resistance of their 
 toys. They were racked and bat- 
 tered, it is true and not always to 
 be trusted as to stability, but we 
 knew them and their shortcomings-, 
 and they knew us and ours. We 
 knew just how to get them up wind- 
 ing stairs and through narrow 
 doors. They knew about the 
 length of time between each migra- 
 tion, and just about what to expect 
 with each stage of our Progress. 
 They must have long foreseen the 
 end. Let us hope they will one 
 day become " antiques " and fall 
 into fonder and more faithful 
 hands. 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 143 
 
 But again I am digressing — it 
 is my usual fault. We invested 
 presently in a Chippendale side- 
 board, and a tall clock which gave 
 me no peace night or day until I 
 heard its mellow tick and strike 
 in our own dim little hall. The 
 aperture in the Sum was now plain- 
 ly visible, and by the time we had 
 added the desk, which I had felt 
 unable to afford at the start, and a 
 chair to match, it had become an 
 orifice that widened to a gap, with 
 the still further addition of a small 
 but not inexpensive Chippendale 
 cabinet and something to put 
 within it. 
 
 The Little Woman called a halt 
 now. She said she thought we 
 had enough invested in this par- 
 ticular direction, that it was not 
 wise to put all one's eggs into one 
 basket. Besides, we had all the 
 things our place would hold com- 
 
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144 ^'^^ ^^^ Dwellers. 
 
 fortably : rather more, in fact, ex- 
 cept in tlie matter of rugs. The 
 floors of the Sunshine apartment 
 were hard finished and shellacked. 
 Such rugs as we had were rare 
 only as to numbers, and we were 
 no longer proud of them. I quite 
 agreed with the Little Woman on 
 the question of furniture, but I 
 said that now we had such good 
 things in that line, I would invest 
 in one really good rug. 
 
 I did. I drifted one day into 
 an Armenian place on Broadway 
 into which the looms of the Orient 
 had poured a lavish store. Small 
 black-haired men issued from 
 among the heaped-up wares like 
 mice in a granary. I was sur- 
 rounded — I was beseeched and en- 
 treated — I was made to sit down 
 while piece after piece of antiquity 
 and art were unrolled at my feet. 
 At each unrolling the tallest of 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 145 
 
 the black men would spread his 
 hands and look at me. 
 
 " A painting, a painting, a 
 masterpiece. I never have such 
 fine piece since I begin busi- 
 ness ; " and each of the other small 
 black men would spread their 
 hands and look at me and murmur 
 low, reverent exclamations. 
 
 I did not buy the first time. 
 You must know that even when 
 one has become inured to the 
 tariff on antique furniture, and 
 has still the remains of a Sum to 
 draw upon, there is something 
 about the prices of oriental rugs 
 that is discouraging when one has 
 ever given the matter much pre- 
 vious thought. 
 
 But the memory of those un- 
 rolled masterpieces haunted me. 
 There was something fascinating 
 and Eastern and fine about sitting 
 in state as it were, and having the 
 
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146 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 treasures of the Orient spread 
 before you by those little dark 
 men. 
 
 So I went again, and this time I 
 made the first downward step. It 
 was a Cashmere — a thick, mellow 
 antique piece with a purple bloom 
 pervading it, and a narrow faded 
 Strip at one end that betokened 
 exposure and age. The Little 
 Woman gasped when she saw it, 
 and the Precious Ones approved it 
 in chorus. It took me more than 
 a week to confess the full price. 
 It had to be done by stages ; for of 
 course the Little Woman had not 
 sat as I had sat and had the " paint- 
 ings of the East " unrolled at her 
 feet and thus grown accustomed to 
 magnificence. To tell her all at 
 once that our one new possession 
 had cost about five times as 
 much as all the rest of our rugs 
 put together would have been an 
 
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Inheritance and Mania, i^y 
 
 unnecessary rasliness on my part. 
 As it was, she came to it by degrees, 
 and by degrees also she realized 
 that our other floor coverings were 
 poor, base, and spurious. 
 
 Still I was prudent in jny next 
 selections. I bought two smaller 
 pieces, a Kazak strip, and a Beloo- 
 chistan mat. This was really all we 
 needed, but a few days later a small 
 piece of antique Bokhara over- 
 powered me, and I fell. I said it 
 would be nice on the wall, and the 
 Little Woman confessed that it 
 was, but again insisted that we 
 would better stop now. She little 
 realized my condition. The small 
 dark men in their dim-lit Broadway 
 cave had woven a spell about me 
 that made the seductions of antique 
 furniture as a forgotten tale. 
 
 I bought a book on rug collect- 
 ing, and I could not pass their 
 treasure-house without turning in. 
 
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148 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 They had learned to know me 
 from afar, and the sound of my 
 step was the signal for a horde of 
 them to come tumbling out from 
 among the rugs. 
 
 It was the old story of Eastern 
 magic. The spell of the Orient 
 was upon me, and in the language 
 of my friends I went plunging 
 down the r«^ged path to ruin. I 
 added an Anatolian to my collec- 
 tions — a small one that I could slip 
 into the house without the Little 
 Woman seeing it until it was 
 placed and in position to help me 
 in my defense. It was the same 
 with a Bergama and a Coula, but 
 by this time the Precious Ones 
 would come tearing out into the 
 hall when I came home and then 
 rush back, calling as they ran : 
 " Oh, mamma, he's got one and 
 he's holding it behind him ! He's 
 got another rug, mamma ! " 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 149 
 
 So when I got the big Khiva I 
 felt that some new tactics must be 
 adopted. In the first place, it 
 would take two strong men to carry 
 it, and in the next place it would 
 cover the parlor floor completely, 
 and meant the transferring to 
 the walls of several former pur- 
 chases. 
 
 Further than this, its addition 
 would make the hole in the Sum 
 big enough to drive a wagon 
 through — a band-wagon at that 
 with a whole circus procession 
 behind it. Indeed, the remains of 
 the Sum would be merely frag- 
 mentary, so to speak, and only the 
 glad Christmas season could make 
 it possible for me to confess and 
 justify to the Little Woman the 
 fulness of the situation. 
 
 Luckily, Christmas was not far 
 distant. The dark men agreed to 
 hold the big Khiva until the day 
 
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150 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 before, and tlien deliver it to the 
 janitor. With the janitor's help I 
 could get it up and into the apart- 
 ment after the Little Woman had 
 gone to bed. I could spread it 
 down at my leisure and decorate 
 the walls with some of those now 
 on the floor. When on the glad 
 Christmas morning this would 
 burst upon the Little Woman in 
 sudden splendor, I felt that she 
 would not be too severe in her 
 judgment. 
 
 It was a good plan, and it worked 
 as well as most plans do. There 
 were some hitches, of course. The 
 Little Woman, for instance, was 
 not yet in bed when the janitor was 
 ready to help me, and I was in mor- 
 tal terror lest she should hear us 
 getting the big roll into the hall- 
 way, or coming out later should 
 stumble over it in the dark. But 
 she did not seem to hear, and she 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 151 
 
 did not venture out into tlie hall. 
 Neither did she seem to notice any- 
 thing unusual when by and by 
 I stumbled over it myself and 
 plunged through a large pasteboard 
 box in which there was something 
 else for the Little Woman — some- 
 thing likely to make her still more 
 lenient in the matter of the rug. 
 I made enough noise to arouse the 
 people in the next flat, but the 
 Little Woman can be very discreet 
 on Christmas eve. 
 
 She slept well the next morning, 
 too, — a morning I shall long re- 
 member. If you have never at- 
 tempted to lay a ten-by-twelve 
 Khiva rug in a small flat-parlor, 
 under couches and tables and 
 things, and with an extra supply 
 of steam going, you do not under- 
 stand what one can undergo for 
 the sake of art. It's a fairly in- 
 teresting job for three people — two 
 
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152 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 to lift the furniture and one to 
 spread tlie rug, and even tlien it 
 isn't easy to find a place to stand 
 on. It was about four o'clock I 
 think when I began, and the mem- 
 ory of the next three hours is 
 weird, and lacking in Christmas 
 spirit. I know now just how every 
 piece of furniture we possess looks 
 from the under side. I suppose 
 this isn't a bad sort of knowledge 
 to have, but I would rather not 
 acquire it while I am pulling the 
 wrinkles out of a two-hundred- 
 pound rug. But when the Little 
 Woman looked at the result and at 
 me she was even more kind than 
 I had expected. She did not de- 
 nounce me. She couldn't. Look- 
 ing me over carefully she realized 
 dimly what the effort had cost, and 
 pitied me. It was a happy Christ- 
 mas, altogether, and in the after- 
 noon, looking at our possessions. 
 
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Inheritance and Mania. 153 
 
 the lyittle Woman remarked that 
 we needed a house now to display 
 them properly. It was a chance 
 remark but it bore fruit. 
 
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154 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Qilded AfflueTice. 
 
 YET not immediately. We had 
 still to make the final step of 
 our Progress in apartment 
 life, and to acquire other valuable 
 experience. It happened in this 
 wise. 
 
 Of the Sum there still remained 
 a fragment — unimportant and frag- 
 ile, it would seem — but quite suf- 
 ficient, as it proved, to make our 
 lives reasonably exciting for sev- 
 eral months. 
 
 A friend on the Stock Exchange 
 whispered to me one morning that 
 there was to be a big jump in 
 Calfskin Common — something phe- 
 nomenal, he said, and that a hun- 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 155 
 
 dred shares would pay a profit 
 directly that would resemble money 
 picked up in the highway. 
 
 I had never dealt in stocks, or 
 discovered any currency in the 
 public thoroughfares, but my re- 
 cent inheritance of the Sum and its 
 benefits had developed a taste in 
 the right direction. Calfskin Com- 
 mon was low then, almost as low 
 as it has been since, and an option 
 on a hundred shares could be 
 secured with a ridiculously small 
 amount — even the fragment of the 
 Sum would be sufl&cient. 
 
 I mentioned the matter that 
 night to the Little Woman. We 
 agreed almost instantly that there 
 was no reason why we should not 
 make something on Calfskin Com- 
 mon, though I could see that the 
 Little Woman did not know what 
 Calfskin Common was. I have 
 hinted before that she was not then 
 
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156 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 conversant with the life and lingo 
 of the Stock Kxchange, and on the 
 whole my advantage in this direc- 
 tion was less than it seemed at the 
 time. I think we both imagined 
 that Calfskin Common had some- 
 thing to do with a low grade of 
 hides, and the Little Woman said 
 she supposed there must be a pros- 
 pective demand from some foreign 
 country that would advance the 
 price of cheap shoes. Of course it 
 would be nice to have our invest- 
 ments profitable, but on the whole 
 perhaps I'd better lay in an extra 
 pair or so of everyday footwear for 
 the Precious Ones. 
 
 I acquired some information 
 along with my option on the stock 
 next day, so that both the Little 
 Woman and myself could converse 
 quite technically by bed-time. We 
 knew that we had " put up a ten 
 per cent, margin " and had an " op- 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 157 
 
 tion " at twelve dollars a share on 
 a hundred shares of the common 
 stock in leather corporation — said 
 stock being certain to go to fifty 
 and perhaps a hundred dollars a 
 share within the next sixty days. 
 The fragment of the Sum and a 
 trifle more had been exchanged for 
 the Stock, and we were "in on a 
 deal." Then too we had a " stop- 
 loss " on the Stock so that we were 
 safe, whatever happened. 
 
 The Little Woman didn't under- 
 stand the " stop-loss " at first, and 
 when I explained to her that it 
 worked automatically, as it were, 
 she became even more mystified. I 
 gathered from her remarks that 
 she thought it meant something 
 like an automatic water shut-oil 
 such as we had in the bath-room to 
 prevent waste. Of course, that was 
 altogether wrong, and I knew it at 
 the time, but it did not seem worth 
 
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158 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 while to explain in detail. I 
 merely said tliat it was something 
 we could keep setting higher as 
 the stock advanced, so that in event 
 of a downward turn we would save 
 our original sum, with the accrued 
 profits. 
 
 Then we talked about what we 
 would do with the money. We 
 said that now we had such a lot of 
 good things and were going to 
 make money out of the Stock we 
 ought to try one really high-class 
 apartment — something with an ele- 
 vator, and an air of refinement and 
 gentility. It would cost a good 
 deal, of course, but the surroundings 
 would be so much more congenial, 
 so much better for the Precious 
 Ones, and now that I was really 
 doing fairly well, and that we had 
 the Stock — still we would be pru- 
 dent and not move hastily. 
 
 We allowed the Stock to advance 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 159 
 
 five points before we really began to 
 look for a place. Five points ad- 
 vance meant five Hundred dollars' 
 profit on our investment, and my 
 friend on tbe exchange laugbed 
 and congratulated me and said it 
 was only tbe beginning. So we 
 put up the stop-loss, almost as far 
 as it would go, and began to look 
 about for a place that was quite 
 suitable for people with refined 
 taste, some very good things in the 
 way of rugs and furniture, and a 
 Stock. 
 
 We were not proud as yet. We 
 merely felt prosperous and were 
 willing to let fortune smile on us 
 amid the proper surroundings. We 
 said it was easy enough to make 
 money, now that we knew how, 
 and that it was no wonder there 
 were so many rich people in the 
 metropolis. We had fought the 
 hard fight, and were willing now to 
 
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i6o The Van Dwellers. 
 
 take it somewliat easier. We se- 
 lected an apartment with these 
 things in view. 
 
 It was some difficulty to find a 
 place that suited both us and the 
 Precious Ones. Not that they were 
 hard to please — they welcomed 
 anything in the nature of change 
 — ^but at most of the fine places 
 children were rigorously barred, a 
 rule, it seemed to us, that might re- 
 sult in rather trying complications 
 between landlord and tenant in the ' 
 course of time and nature, though 
 we did not pursue investigations in 
 this line. We found lodgment and 
 welcome at length in the Apollo, a 
 newly constructed apartment of the 
 latest pattern and in what seemed a 
 most desirable neighborhood. 
 
 The Apollo was really a very 
 imposing and towering affair, with 
 onyx and gilded halls. The ele- 
 vator that fairly shot us skyward 
 
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Gilded Affluence. i6i 
 
 when we ascended to our eerie nest 
 ten stories above the street, and was 
 a boundless joy to tbe Precious 
 Ones, who would gladly Have made 
 tbeir playhouse in the gaudy little 
 car with the brown boy in blue and 
 brass. Our fine belongings looked 
 grand in the new suite, and our 
 rugs on the inlaid and polished floor 
 were luxurious and elegant. Com- 
 pared with this, much of our past 
 seemed squalid and a period to be 
 forgotten. Ann, who was still 
 with us, put on a white cap and 
 apron at meal-times, and to answer 
 the bell, though the cap had a 
 habit of getting over one ear, while 
 the apron remained white with 
 difficulty. 
 
 The janitor of the Apollo was 
 quite as imposing as the house it- 
 self, — a fallen nobleman, in fact, 
 though by no means fallen so far 
 as most of those whose possibilities 
 
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1 62 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 of decline had. been immeasurably 
 less. He was stately and uplifting 
 in his demeanor. So much so 
 that I found myself unconsciously 
 imitating his high-born manner 
 and mode of speech. I had a feel- 
 ing that he was altogether more 
 at home in the place than we were, 
 but I hoped this would pass. 
 Whatever the cost, we were deter- 
 mined to live up to the Apollo and 
 its titled Chargi d' Affaires. 
 
 And now came exciting days. 
 The Stock continued to advance, 
 as our friend had prophesied. 
 Some days it went up one point, 
 some days two. Bvery point meant 
 a hundred dollars' clear profit. One 
 day it advanced five full points. 
 We only counted full points. 
 Fractional advances we threw into 
 the next day's good measure, and 
 Scfc the stop-loss higher, and yet 
 ever higher. 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 163 
 
 We acquired credit with our- 
 selves. We began to tHink that 
 perhaps after all we hadn't taken 
 quite so good an apartment as we 
 deserved. What was a matter of a 
 thousand dollars more or less on 
 a year's rent when the Stock was 
 yielding a profit of a hundred or 
 two dollars a day. We repeated 
 that it was easy enough now to 
 understand how New Yorkers got 
 rich, and could afford the luxuries 
 heretofore regarded by us with a 
 wonderment that was akin to awe. 
 I began to have a vague notion of 
 abandoning other pursuits and go- 
 ing into stocks, altogether. We 
 even talked of owning our own 
 home on Fifth Avenue. Still we 
 were quite prudent, as was our 
 custom. I did not go definitely 
 into stocks, and we remained 
 with the fallen nobleman in the 
 Apollo. Neither did we actually 
 
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164 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 negotiate for Fifth Aventie prop- 
 erty. 
 
 The Little Woman bought many 
 papers during the day. In some 
 of them early stock quotations were 
 printed in red, so it might be truly 
 said that these were red-letter days 
 for the Little Woman. When she 
 heard " Extra ! " being shouted in 
 the street far below she could not 
 dispossess herself of the idea that it 
 had been issued to announce a 
 sensational advance of the Stock. 
 Kven as late as ten o'clock one night 
 she insisted on my going down for 
 one, though I explained that the 
 Stock Exchange had closed some 
 seven hours before. The Precious 
 Ones fairly kept the elevator busy 
 during the afternoon, going for 
 extras, and when the final Wall 
 Street edition was secured they 
 would come shouting in, 
 
 " Here it is. Look at the Stock, 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 165 
 
 quick, Mamma, and see how mucli 
 we've made to-day ! " 
 
 Truly this was a gilded age ; 
 though I confess that it did not 
 seem quite real, and looking back 
 now the memory of it seems less 
 pleasant than that of some of the 
 very hard epochs that had gone 
 before. Still, it occupies a place 
 all its own and is not without 
 value in life's completed scheme. 
 
 The Stock did not go to fifty. It 
 limped before it got to forty, and 
 we began to be harassed by paltry 
 fractional advances, with even an 
 occasional fractional decline. We 
 did not approve of this. It was 
 annoying to look in the Wall 
 Street edition and find that we had 
 made only twelve dollars and a 
 half, instead of a hundred or two, 
 as had been the case in the begin- 
 ning. We even thought of sell- 
 ing Calfskin Common and buying 
 
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1 66 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 a stock that wotild not act tliat 
 way ; but my friend of the exchange 
 advised against it. He said this 
 was merely a temporary thing, 
 and that fifty and a hundred would 
 come along in good time. He 
 adjusted the stop-loss for us so that 
 there was no danger of the Stock 
 being sold on a temporary decline, 
 and we sat down to wait and watch 
 the papers while the Stock gathered 
 strength for a new upward rush 
 that was sure to come, and would 
 place us in a position to gratify a 
 good many of the ambitions lately 
 formed. 
 
 A feverish and nerve-destroying 
 ten days followed. The Stock had 
 become to us as a personal Presence 
 that we watched as it stumbled and 
 struggled and panted, and dug its 
 common Calfskin toes into things 
 in a frantic effort to scale the 
 market. I know now that the men 
 
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Gilded Affluence. i6y 
 
 who had organized the deal were 
 boasting and shouting, and beating 
 the air in their wild encouragement, 
 while those who opposed it were 
 hammering, and throttling and 
 flinging mud, in as wild an effort to 
 check and demoralize and destroy. 
 At the time, however, we caught 
 only the echo of these things, and 
 believed as did our friend on the ex- 
 change, that a great capitalist was 
 in control of Calfskin Common and 
 would send it to par. 
 
 Only we wished he would send 
 it faster. We did not like to fool 
 along this way, an eighth up and 
 an eighth, or a quarter down, and 
 all uncertainty and tension. Be- 
 sides, we needed our accruing 
 profits to meet our heavily in- 
 creased expenses which were by no 
 means easy to dispose of with our 
 normal income, improved though 
 it was with time and tireless effort. 
 
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1 68 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 Indeed, most of the eighths and 
 quarters presently seemed to be in 
 the wrong direction. It was no 
 fun to lose even twelve dollars and 
 a half a day and keep it up. The 
 Presence in the household was in 
 delicate health. It needed to be 
 coddled and pampered, and the 
 strain of it told on us. The 
 Little Woman developed an anx- 
 ious look, and grew nervous and 
 feverish at the clamor of an 
 " extra." Sometimes I heard her 
 talking " plus " and " minus" and 
 " points " in her sleep and knew 
 that she had taken the Stock to bed 
 with her. 
 
 The memory of our old quiet 
 life in the Sunshine and Monte 
 Christo . began to grow in sweet- 
 ness beside this sordid and gilded 
 existence in the Apollo. The 
 massive portals and towering 
 masonry which at first had been as 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 169 
 
 a solid foundation for genuine re- 
 spectability began to seem gloomy 
 ind overpowering, and lacking in 
 tbe true bome spirit we bad found 
 elsewbere. Tbe smartly dressed 
 and mannered people wbo rode up 
 and down witb us on tbe elevator 
 did not seem quite genuine, and 
 tbeir complexions were not always 
 real. It may bave been tbe condi- 
 tion of tbe Stock tbat disbeartened 
 us and made tbeir lives as well as 
 ours seem artificial, I don't know. 
 I only know tbat I began to bave 
 a dim feeling tbat we would bave 
 been bappier if we bad been sat- 
 isfied witb our oriental rugs and 
 antique furniture, and tbe remnant 
 of tbe Sum, witbout tbe acquaint- 
 ance of tbe Stock and tbe fallen 
 nobleman below stairs. But, as 
 I bave said, all tbings bave tbeir 
 place and value, I suppose, and 
 our regrets, if tbey were tbat, bave 
 
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170 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 long since been dissipated, with 
 the things that made them pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Quickly, as they had come, they 
 passed and were not. I was work- 
 ing busily one morning in my south 
 front study when the Little Woman 
 entered hurriedly. It was late 
 April and our windows were open, 
 but being much engaged I had not 
 noticed the cries of "extra! " that 
 floated up from the street below. It 
 was these that had brought the 
 Little Woman, however, and she 
 leaned out to look and listen. 
 
 " They are calling out something 
 about stocks and Wall Street," she 
 said, " I am sure of it. Go down 
 and see, quick ! Calfskin Common 
 must have gone to a hundred! " 
 
 "Oh, pshaw!" I laughed, "it's 
 only the assassination of a king, or 
 something. You're excited and 
 don't hear right." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Gilded Affluence. lyi 
 
 Still, I did go down, and I fumed 
 at the elevator-boy for being so 
 slow to answer, tbougli I suppose lie 
 was prompt enough. The "extra" 
 callers had passed by the time I 
 got to the street, but I chased 
 and caught them. Then I ran 
 all the way back to the Apollo, 
 and plunged into the elevator that 
 was just starting heavenward. 
 
 I suppose I looked pretty white 
 when I rushed in where the Little 
 Woman was waiting. But the 
 type that told the dreadful tale was 
 red enough, in all conscience. 
 There it was, in daubed vermilion, 
 for the whole world and the Little 
 Woman to see. 
 
 " PANIC ON WALL STREET. 
 
 " Break in Leather stocks causes 
 general decline. Calfskin Com- 
 mon falls twenty points in ten min- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1/2 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 utes. Three failures and more to 
 come ! " 
 
 Following this was a brief list of 
 the most sensational drops and the 
 names of the failing firms. For 
 a moment we stared at each other, 
 speechless. Then the Little 
 Woman recovered voice. 
 
 *' Oh," she gasped, " we've caused 
 a panic ! " 
 
 " No," I panted, " but we're in 
 one ! " 
 
 "And we'll lose everything! 
 People always do in panics, don't 
 they?" 
 
 I nodded gloomily, 
 
 " A good many do. That is, 
 unless " 
 
 " But the stop-loss ! " she remem- 
 bered joyfully, " we've got a stop- 
 loss ! " 
 
 " That's so ! " I assented, " the 
 stop-loss ! Our stock is already 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Gilded Affluence. iJT, 
 
 sold — that is — if — tlie stop-loss 
 worked." 
 
 " But you know you said it 
 worked automatically." 
 
 "So it does — automatically, if — 
 if it holds ! It must have worked ! 
 I'll telephone at once, and see." 
 
 There was a telephone in the 
 Apollo and I hurried to it. Five 
 women and three men were waiting 
 ahead of me, and every one tried to 
 telephone about stocks. Some got 
 replies and became hysterical. One 
 elderly woman with a juvenile 
 make-up and a great many rings 
 fainted and was borne away uncon- 
 scious. A good many got nothing 
 whatever. 
 
 I was one of the latter. The 
 line to my brokers was busy. It 
 was busy all that day, during which 
 we bought extras and suffered. By 
 nightfall we would have rejoiced 
 to know that even the original frag- 
 
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174 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 ment of the Sum had. been saved out 
 of tlie general wreck of things 
 on the Street. 
 
 It was. Even a little more, for 
 the stop-loss that had failed to hold 
 against the first sudden and over- 
 whelming pressure, had caught 
 somewhere about twenty, and our 
 brokers next morning advised us 
 of the sale. 
 
 It was a quiet breakfast that we 
 had. We were rather mixed as to 
 our feelings, but I know now that a 
 sense of relief was what we felt 
 most. It was all over — the tension 
 of anxious days, and the restless 
 nights. Many had been ruined 
 utterly. We had saved something 
 out of the wreck — enough to pay 
 the difference in our rent. Then, 
 too, we were alive and well, and we 
 had our Precious Ones. Also our 
 furniture, which was both satis- 
 factory and paid for. Through 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 175 
 
 tlie open windows the sweet spring 
 air was blowing in, bringing a 
 breath and memory of country 
 lanes. Even before breakfast was 
 over I reminded the Little woman 
 of what she had once said about need- 
 ing a home of our own, now that we 
 had things to put in it. I said 
 that the memory of our one brief 
 suburban experience was like a 
 dream of sunlit and perfumed fields. 
 That we had run the whole gamut 
 of apartment life and the Apollo 
 had been the post-graduate course. 
 In some ways it was better than 
 the others, and if we chose to pinch 
 and economize in other ways, as 
 many did, we still might manage 
 to pay for its luxury, but after all 
 it was not, and never had been a 
 home to me, while the ground and 
 ' the Precious Ones were too far 
 apart for health. 
 
 And the Little Woman, God bless 
 
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176 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 her, agreed instantly and heartily, 
 and declared that we would go. 
 Onyx and gilded elegance she said 
 were obtained at too great a price 
 for people with simple tastes and 
 moderate incomes. As for stocks, 
 we agreed that they were alto- 
 gether in keeping with our present 
 surroundings — with the onyx and 
 the gilt — with the fallen noble- 
 man below stairs and those who 
 were fallen and not noble, the arti- 
 ficial aristocrats, who rode up and 
 down with us on the elevator. We 
 had had quite enough of it all. 
 We had taken our apartment for 
 a year, but as the place was al- 
 , ready full, with tenants waiting, 
 there would be no trouble to sublet 
 to some one of the many who are 
 ever willing to spend most of their 
 income in rent and live the best 
 way they can. Peace be with 
 them. They are welcome to do so, 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Gilded Affluence. lyy 
 
 but for people like ourselves the 
 Apollo was not built, and Vanitas 
 Vanitatum is written upon its 
 walls. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
178 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A Home at Last. 
 
 WB began reading advertise- 
 ments at once and took 
 jaunts to " see property." 
 Tlie various investment compa- 
 nies supplied free transportation 
 on these occasions. It was a 
 pleasant variation from the old 
 days of flat hunting. The Precious 
 Ones, who remembered with joy our 
 former brief suburban experiment, 
 appreciated it, and raced shouting 
 through rows of new " instalment 
 houses " with nice lawns, all within 
 the commutation limits. We set- 
 tled on one, at last, through an 
 agency which the trolley-man re- 
 ferred to as the " Reality Trust." 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
A Home at Last. lyc) 
 
 The cash-payment was small and 
 the instalments, if long contin- 
 ued, were at least not discourag- 
 ing as to size. We had a nice 
 wide lawn with green grass, a 
 big, dry cellar with a furnace, a 
 high, light garret, and eight beauti- 
 ful light rooms, all our own. At 
 the back there were clothes-poles 
 and room for a garden. In front 
 there was a long porch with a place 
 for a hammock. There was room 
 in the yard for the Precious Ones 
 to romp, as well as space to spread 
 out our rugs. We closed the bar- 
 gain at once, and engaged a mov- 
 ing man. Our Flat days were 
 over. 
 
 And now fortune seemed all at 
 once to smile. The day of our 
 last move was perfect. The mov- 
 ing man came exactly on time 
 and delivered our possessions at 
 the new home on the moment of 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
i8o The Van Dwellers. 
 
 our arrival there. The Little 
 Woman superintended matters in- 
 side, while I spread out my rugs 
 on the grass in the sun and shook 
 them and swept them and scolded 
 the Precious Ones, who were in- 
 clined to sit on the one I was han- 
 dling, to my heart's content. 
 Within an hour the butcher, the 
 baker, and the merry milk-maker 
 had called and established rela- 
 tions. By night-fall we were fairly 
 settled — our furniture, so crowded 
 in a little city apartment, airily 
 scattered through our eight big, 
 beautiful rooms, and our rugs, all 
 fresh and clean, reaching as far as 
 they would go, suggesting new ad- 
 ditions to our collection whenever 
 the spell of the dark-faced Arme- 
 nians in their dim oriental Broad- 
 way recess should assert itself dur- 
 ing the years to come. 
 
 Sweet spring days followed. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
OnE GARDEN FLOURISHED. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
A Home at Last. 1 8 1 
 
 We fairly reveled in seed 
 catalogues, and our garden flour- 
 ished. Our neighbors, instead 
 of borrowing our loose property, 
 as we had been led to expect by 
 the comic papers, literally over- 
 whelmed us with garden tools and 
 good advice. We needed both, 
 certainly, and were duly thankful. 
 As for the Precious Ones, they 
 grew fat and brown, refused to 
 wear hats and shoes when summer 
 came, and it required some argu- 
 ment to convince them that even 
 a fragmentary amount of clothes 
 was necessary. All day now they 
 run, and shout, and fall down and 
 cry, and get up again and laugh, 
 sit in the hammock and swing their 
 disreputable dolls, and eat and quar- 
 rel and make up and have a beauti- 
 ful time. At night they sleep in a 
 big airy room where screens let the 
 breeze in and keep out the few 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
I 8 2 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 friendly mosquitoes that are a part 
 of all suburban life. We are com- 
 muters, and we are glad of it, let 
 tbe comic papers say wbat they 
 will. The fellows who write those 
 things are bitten with something 
 worse than mosquitoes, i. e., envy 
 — I know, because I have written 
 some of them myself, in the old 
 days. Perhaps it is hard to get to 
 and from the train sometimes — 
 perhaps the snow may blow into the 
 garret and the lawn be hard to mow 
 on a hot day. But the joy of the 
 healthy Precious Ones and of com- 
 ing out of the smelly, clattering city 
 at the end of a hot summer day to a 
 cool, sweet quiet, more than makes 
 up for all the rest ; while as one falls 
 asleep, in a restful room that lets 
 the breeze in from three different 
 directions, the memories of flat- 
 life, flat-hunting, and janitors — of 
 sweltering, disordered nights, of 
 
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Gilded Affluence. 183 
 
 crasliing cobble and clanging 
 trolleys, of evil-smelling halls and 
 stairways, of tbese and of every 
 other phase of the yardless, con- 
 stricted apartment existence, blend 
 into a sigh of relief that is lost in 
 dreamless, refreshing suburban 
 sleep. 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 84 The Van 'Dwellers. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Closing Remarks. 
 
 TO those who of necessity are 
 still living in city apart- 
 ments, and especially to 
 those who are contemplating flat 
 life I would in all seriousness say 
 a few closing words. 
 
 It requires education to get the 
 best out of flat life. Not such 
 education as is acquired at Harvard, 
 or Vassar, or even at the Industrial 
 or Cooking schools, but education 
 in the greater school of Humanity. 
 In fact, flat living may be said to 
 amount almost to a profession. 
 The choice of an apartment is an 
 art in itself, and, as no apartment 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Closing Remarks. 185 
 
 is without drawbacks, the most 
 vital should be considered as all- 
 important, and an agreeable will- 
 ingness to put up with the minor 
 shortcomings of equal value. Sun- 
 light, rental, locality, accessibility, 
 janitor-service, size, and conven- 
 ience are all important, and about 
 in the order named. A dark apart- 
 ment means doctor's bills, and by 
 dark I mean any apartment into 
 which the broad sun does not shine 
 at least a portion of the day. Sun- 
 light is the great microbe-killer, 
 and as moss grows on the north 
 side of a tree, so do minute poison 
 fungi grow in the dim apartment. 
 As to locality, a clean street, as far 
 as possible from the business cen- 
 ter is to be preferred, and away 
 from the crash of the elevated rail- 
 way. People are killed, morally 
 and physically, by noise. For 
 this reason an apartment several 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 86 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 flights up is desirable, though the 
 top floor is said by physicians to 
 be somewhat less healthy than the 
 one just below. 
 
 It is hard to instruct the novice in 
 these matters. He must learn by 
 experience. But there is one word 
 that contains so much of the secret 
 of successful apartment life that I 
 must not omit it here. That word 
 is Charity. I do not mean by this 
 the giving of money or old clothes 
 to those who slip in whenever the 
 hall door is left unlocked. I 
 mean that larger Charity which 
 comes of a wider understanding 
 of the natures and conditions of 
 men. 
 
 You cannot expect, for instance, 
 that a man or a woman, who serves 
 for rent only, and wretched base- 
 ment rent at that, or for a few 
 dollars monthly additional at most, 
 can be a very intelligent, capable 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Closing Remarks. 187 
 
 person, of serene temper and with 
 qualities that one would most de- 
 sire in the ideal janitor. In the 
 ordinary New York flat house 
 janitors are engaged on terms that 
 attract only people who can find no 
 other means of obtaining shelter 
 and support. Those who would 
 fulfill your idea of what a janitor 
 should do have been engaged for 
 the more expensive apartments, or 
 they have gone into other profes- 
 sions. The flat-house janitor's 
 work is laborious, unclean, and 
 never ending. It is not conducive 
 to a neat appearance or a joyous 
 disposition. If your janitor is only 
 fairly prompt in the matter of garb- 
 age and ashes, and even approxi- 
 mately liberal as to heat and hot 
 water, be glad to say a kind word to 
 him now and then without expect- 
 ing that he will be humble or even 
 obliging. If you hear him knock- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
1 8 8 The Van Jewellers. 
 
 ing things about and condemning 
 childhood in a general way, re^ 
 member that your children are only 
 children, like all the rest, and that 
 a great many children under one 
 roof can stretch even a strong, wise 
 person's endurance to the snapping 
 point. 
 
 Then there are the neighbors. 
 Because the woman across the 
 hall is boiling onions and cabbage 
 to-day, do not forget that your cab- 
 bage and onion day will come on 
 Wednesday, and she will probably 
 enjoy it just as little as you are 
 appreciating her efforts now. And 
 because the children overhead run 
 up and down and sound like a herd 
 of buffaloes, don't imagine that 
 your own Precious Ones are any 
 more fairy-footed to the people who 
 live just below. It's all in the 
 day's endurance, and the wider 
 your understanding and the greater 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Closing Remarks. 189 
 
 your charity, the more patiently 
 you will live and let live. It was 
 an old saying that no two families 
 could live under one roof ; but in 
 flat life ten and sometimes twenty 
 families must live under one roof, 
 and while you do not need to know 
 them all, or perhaps any of them, 
 you will find that they do, in some 
 measure, become a part of your 
 lives, and that your own part of the 
 whole is just about what you make 
 it. 
 
 Also, there are the servant girls. 
 We cannot hope that a highly ef- 
 ficient, intelligent young girl will 
 perform menial labor some sixteen 
 hours a day for a few dollars a 
 week and board, with the privilege 
 of eating off the tubs and sleeping 
 in a five-by-seven closet off the 
 kitchen, when she can obtain a clerk- 
 ship in one of the department stores 
 where she has light, clean employ- 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
190 The Van Dwellers. 
 
 ment, shorter hours, and sees some- 
 thing of the passing show ; or when, 
 by attending night school for a short 
 time, she can learn stenography 
 and command even better salary for 
 still shorter hours. It requires quite 
 as much intelligence to be a capable 
 house servant as to be a good clerk ; 
 and as for education, there is no 
 lack of that in these days, what- 
 ever the rank of life. Bven when 
 a girl prefers household service, if 
 she be bright and capable it is but 
 a question of time when she will 
 find employment with those to 
 whom the question of wages is 
 considered as secondary to that of 
 the quality of service obtained in 
 return. 
 
 So you see we must not expect 
 too much of our " girl for general 
 housework," unless we are pre- 
 pared to pay her for her longer 
 hours and harder work something 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Closing Remarks. 191 
 
 approximating the sum we pay to 
 the other girl who comes down in 
 a sailor hat and pretty shirt waist 
 at nine or ten to take a few letters 
 and typewrite them, and read a 
 nice new novel between times until 
 say five o'clock, and who gets four 
 weeks' vacation in hot weather, and 
 five if she asks for it prettily, with 
 no discontinuance of salary. All 
 this may be different, some day, 
 but while we are waiting, let us 
 not forget that there are many 
 things in the world that it would 
 be well to remember, and that " the 
 greatest of these^'' and the one that 
 embraces all the rest, " is Charity ! " 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
LORDS %E NORTH 
 
 By A. C. LAUT 
 A Strong Historical Novel 
 
 Y ORDS OF THE NORTH is a thrilling romance 
 # ^ dealing with the rivalries and intrigues of Tie Ancient 
 and Honorable Hudson's Bay and the North- West 
 Companies for the supremacy of the for trade in the 
 Great North. It is a story of life in the open; of 
 pioneers and trappers. The life of the fiir traders in 
 Canada is graphically depicted. The struggles of the Selkirk 
 settlers and the intrigues which made the life of the two great 
 fur trading companies so full of romantic interest, are here 
 laid bare. Francis Parhman and other historians havfi 
 written of the discovery and colonization of this part of our 
 great North American continent, but no novel has appeared 
 so full of life and vivid interest as Lords of the North. 
 Much valuable information has been obtained from old docu- 
 ments and the records of the rival companies which wielded 
 unlimited power over a vast extent of our country. The 
 style is admirable, and the descriptions of an untamed conti- 
 nent, of vast forest wastes, rivers, lakes and prairies, will 
 place this book among the foremost historical novels of the 
 present day. The struggles of the English for supremacy, 
 the capturing of frontier posts and forts, and the life of trader 
 and trapper are pictured with a master's hand. Besides 
 being vastly interesting. Lords of the North is a book of his- 
 torical value. g^^^^^ g^^^ ^,g^ 
 
 J. r. TAYLOR Ca COMPANY 
 
 5 * 7 EJIST Smm'^WsoM" NEW YORK 
 
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 Mr. Lloyd has only to continue to write and Pennsylvania will be lifted 5 
 I venture to add, into the list of preferred securities." 
 
 **A Drone and a Dreamer" is a lich fulfillment of this 
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 book is an exquisite love story and charming idyl of life among the moun- 
 tains and valleys of the Keystone State. 
 
 DROCH in LIFE : 
 
 "One of the most fertile yet unploughed regions in the United States 
 for local fiction is Pennsylvania. It is old, and vast and picturesque. 
 Bayard Taylor and Weir Mitchell have given the Philadelphia end of the 
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 inspired a novel or two. These writers, however, have hardly scratched 
 around the corners of the great state. Mr. Lloyd does not try to palm off 
 a weak imitation of a Miss Wilkins Yankee as a rustic Pennsylvanian, 
 His humor comes spontaneously fi-om the soil.'* 
 
 BOOK BUYER : 
 
 ** Mr. Lloyd is an excellent workman. He makes us see the quiet of 
 the hills and the allurements of the trout-stream, yet he refi*ains as scrupu- 
 lously as Mr. Howells himself from obtruding his own personality. His 
 characters themselves apparently produce the effects due to his skill. His 
 subject-matter is remarkably fresh. Pervading it all is a delightful humor. * ' 
 
 J. r. TAYLOR (SL^ COMPANY 
 
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PARLOUS TIMES 
 
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 A Novel of Modern Diplomacy 
 
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 Parlous Times is a society novel of to-day. 
 The scene is laid in London in diplomatic 
 circles. The romance was suggested by experi- 
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 theme both fresh and attractive. The plot is 
 strong, and the action of the book goes with a 
 rush. Political conspiracy and the secrets of 
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 Altogether it is a good story exceedingly well 
 told, and promises to be Mr. Wells' most suc- 
 
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 Cloth, 8vo, $I.SO 
 
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Trimitt Bells 
 
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 Cloth, Svo, Sf'SO 
 Sixteen full-pa^e Illustrations by Bwelye* 
 
 '*One of tKe best stories ever "written by 
 j^melia £^. Barr." 
 
 ST. LOUIS GLOBi: DEMOCRAT. 
 
 CHRISTIAN NATION. 
 
 ' 'Without question the best book for young girls which has appeared 
 for years. Besides being interesting it has an educational value, as it is good 
 supplementary reading to a school course in history. Mrs. Barr is at her 
 best in Trinity Bells. We trust that every library will soon have a copy on 
 Its shelves." 
 
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 "In idea and execution this is one of the author* s best worki, and 
 well worthy of its superb dress of silver and green.** 
 
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 "The name is happily chosen for this romantic story of life in New 
 York during the period preceding the war with the Mediterranean corsairs, 
 for the bells of Old Trinity nng out an accompaniment to the changing for- 
 tunes of the lovable little Dutch heroine. There is a charm in Mrs. Barr*s 
 work that goes directly to the reader* s heart, while her skill in the delinea* 
 tion of character is no less effective in its appeal to the mind. Trinity Bells 
 is an excellent minor historical romance, worthy of a permanent place in a 
 young girl's library.** 
 
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 "No more agreeable story of life in the early days of our country has 
 ever been written. Trinity Bells shows Mrs. Barr*s charm and power in 
 all its force and beauty. Besides its historical value, it is vasdy entertaining," 
 
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 5*7 EMST SIXTEENTH ST.. NEW YORK 
 
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 By KATE UPSON CLARH. 
 
 ClotH, 6vo, $1.25 
 
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 itories." 
 
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 •*It seems to me that no stories, long or short, have appeared, which 
 illustrate more perfectly than these what we have in mind when we use, in 
 a literary sense, the term 'Americanism.^ The atmosphere of these beau- 
 tiful tales is truthfully varied to suit every locality described, but everywhere 
 the standards and ideals are set alike. A sound, healthiul Americanism, 
 just what we wish the word to mean, pervades them all," 
 
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 **It is not art ; it is genius.'* 
 
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 enough humor to leaven the whole. 
 
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 **Full of exquisite pathos, a tenderness, a delicacy of touch not ofbsn 
 equalled. The art is perfect." 
 
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NORTH 
 
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 CHRONIC "^"Z "-""' 
 LrO-A-FUR 8vo, Cloth. $1.25 
 
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 blues.** 
 
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 is deserving of rank up-front among the American humorists.** 
 
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 "A cheerful companion. The reviewer has enjoyed it in a month 
 when books to be read have been many and the time precious.'* 
 
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 the book that isn't iirst-dass fiin, and there's no reason why The Chmnk 
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Charles Ringsley 
 
 NOVELS. POEMS AND LIFE 
 CHESTER EDITION 
 
 Illustrated with 42 photogravure plates printed on Japa- 
 nese paper, from paintings by Zeigler, and from portraits by 
 Reich and others, photographs, etc. Introductions by Mau- 
 rice Kingsley. Printed from new, large type, on choice 
 laid paper. 
 
 14 volumes, 8vo, doth, gilt top, f20.00. 
 One'Half crushed morocco, gilt top, $4I.OO. 
 
 Supplied separately in cloth, aa follows; 
 
 HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 ALTON LOCKE 
 
 WESTWARD HO! 
 
 YEAST 
 
 TWO YEARS AGO .... 
 
 HYPATIA ...... 
 
 POEMS 
 
 LETTERS AND MEMORIES - - - 
 
 This is the anly illustrated edition of this author's 
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 son are particularly interesting and timely. 
 
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 3.00 
 
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The Game of Squash 
 
 BTf 
 
 EUSTACE MILES, M.A. 
 
 Of Ki-n-g's College, Cambridge 
 
 A.mateur Tennis CHampion of E^n^land and tH« 
 
 United States i Amateur Racquet CHampion 
 
 United States and Canada 
 
 PROFVSELr ILLVSTRJITBD WITH FULL-VMGS 
 HJiLF-TONES MND LIMB CUTS, DIJtGRMMS, 
 xrc, BOUMD IM OOZE LEVMST, FLMXIBLM 
 COVER, S>l.SO NET 
 
 Heartily- recommended by 
 
 GEORGE STANDING 
 
 United States Champion Racquets and Squash 
 
 Masr be obtained at any of the leading athletic 
 clubs or from the publishers 
 
 J. r. TAYLOR CEL COMPANY 
 
 5 <B. 7 EAST SIXTEENTH ST.. NE^W YORK 
 
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Canadian FolK-Lrife and 
 FolK-Lore 
 
 WILLIAM PA.KKER GREENOUGH 
 
 Numerous Illustrations. Cro-wn 6vo., OIotH, $1.30 
 
 TOROlifTO WORLD 
 
 "We have no hesitation in saying that tliis book is a distinct contrib- 
 i^on to the literature of Canada.'* 
 
 iiVBBEC p^aiLr TBLBGRJtl'H 
 
 "There is not a dull page in the whole book.** 
 
 X/Zel^ierS Sin, a Comlsh Romance. 
 Dy J. H. PEARCE 
 
 New illustrate J edition. Cloth, S-vo., $1. 2S 
 
 BVBPMLO EXPRESS 
 
 "A powerful tale. This book should go beside Hall Caint's trage- 
 dies of fisherfolk.** 
 
 TIMES' UNION 
 
 "Deserves to be read by all Americans as well as the English-speaking 
 people in the four corners of the earth." 
 
 1 xl© IT otentate forbes-robertson 
 
 New illustrated edition. Cloth, &vo., $1.2^ 
 
 DEJUOER REPUBLICSAl 
 
 "A picture of knighthood as rare as a scene on an ancient bit of tap- 
 estry." 
 
 THE JiCMDEMY 
 
 "A steel-bright romance of the middle ages — flashing blades, passages 
 of love and adventure, and all the paraphernalia of romance marshaled by a 
 skilful hand." 
 
 A Hand-Booh of Wrestling 
 
 By HUGH F. LEONARD 
 
 Instructor in Wrestling at the New York Athletic Club. 
 Cro-wn Svo., Cloth, sso illustrations, $2» Edition de Luxe, 9S 
 "I wish the work the success which it merits." 
 
 — D. A. Sargent, Medical Director, Harvard University. 
 
 J. r. TAYLOR (EL COMPANY 
 
 5*7 EJtST SIXTEENTH ST.. NEW YORH 
 
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Little Leather 
 Breeches 
 
 AJiB OTHER, SOUTHEIIJ^ RHYMES 
 
 COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 FRANCIS P. WIGHTMAN 
 
 Forty-eight full-page colored illustrations and cover 
 by the author 
 
 Qviarto, $1.50 
 
 ^ ^^ 
 
 PETER NEWELL 
 
 "Little Leather Breeches is a permanent contribudon to 
 the literature of" the day. Not only is it highly amusing, 
 but also of genuine value as a collection and presentation of 
 folk-lore of a peculiar and interesting people. / do not hesi- 
 tate to set the stamp of approval on your book." 
 
 Jt. B. FROST 
 
 "The book is very well done, very bright and clever in 
 its treatment of the subject. The material you have gathered 
 together is excellent, very interesting, and should be 
 preserved. ' ' 
 
 "The most unique gift-book of the season." 
 
 — St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
 
 "A bit of rollickmg fiin." — The Book-Buyer. 
 
 "Refreshingly original. Lavishly illustrated." 
 
 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 
 
 "Since the days of Lear's Nonsense Book nothing has 
 appeared so foil of genuine humor." — Savannah Press. 
 
 J. F- TAYLOR (Sl COMPANY 
 
 5*7 EJiST SIXTEENTH ST.. NEW YORK 
 
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Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
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