it, to some, mystery and sudden death, and to me the worst case of
"shingles" I have ever seen.

My name is Pitman--in this narrative. It is not really Pitman, but
that does well enough. I belong to an old Pittsburgh family. I was
born on Penn Avenue, when that was the best part of town, and I lived,
until I was fifteen, very close to what is now the Pittsburgh Club. It
was a dwelling then; I have forgotten who lived there.

I was a girl in seventy-seven, during the railroad riots, and I recall
our driving in the family carriage over to one of the Allegheny hills,
and seeing the yards burning, and a great noise of shooting from
across the river. It was the next year that I ran away from school to
marry Mr. Pitman, and I have not known my family since. We were never
reconciled, although I came back to Pittsburgh after twenty years of
wandering. Mr. Pitman was dead; the old city called me, and I came. I
had a hundred dollars or so, and I took a house in lower Allegheny,
where, because they are partly inundated every spring, rents are
cheap, and I kept boarders. My house was always orderly and clean,
and although the neighborhood had a bad name, a good many theatrical
people stopped with me. Five minutes across the bridge, and they were
in the theater district. Allegheny at that time, I believe, was
still an independent city. But since then it has allied itself with
Pittsburgh; it is now the North Side.

I was glad to get back. I worked hard, but I made my rent and my
living, and a little over. Now and then on summer evenings I went to
one of the parks, and sitting on a bench, watched the children playing
around, and looked at my sister's house, closed for the summer. It is
a very large house: her butler once had his wife boarding with me--a