pillars--such as herald the approach to the Nob Hill palaces; no rare
glass bow-windows looking out on to flower bedecked lawns; no vast
betiled hall, with rotundas in the centre; no highly polished oak
staircases; no frescoed ceilings; no tufted, cerulean blue silk
draperies; and no sweet perfumery--only the smell, if one may so
suddenly sink to a third-class expression--only the smell of rank
tobacco and equally rank lager beer. No, Messrs. Kelson and Curtis
resided within a stone's throw of the five cent baths in Rutter
Street--and that was the nearest they ever got to bathing. Their suite
of apartments consisted of one room, about ten by eight feet, which
served as a dining-room, drawing-room, study, boudoir, kitchen,
bedroom, and--from sheer force of habit, I was about to add bathroom;
but as I have already hinted cold water on half-empty stomachs and
chilly livers is uninviting; besides, soap costs something. Their
furniture was antique but not massive; nor could any of it be fairly
reckoned superfluous. All told, it consisted of a bedstead (three
six-foot planks on four sugar cubes; the bedclothes--a pair of
discarded overalls, a torn and much emaciated blanket, a woolly neck
wrap, a yellow vest, and the garments they stood in); a small round
and rather rickety deal table; and one chair. Of the very limited
number of culinary utensils, the frying-pan was by far the most
important. Its handle served as a poker, and its pan, as well as for
frying, roasting and boiling, did duty for a teapot and a slop-basin.
They had no crockery. They had only one thing in abundance--namely,
air; for the lower frame of the window having long lacked glass in it,
a couple of pages of the _Examiner_, fixed in it, flapped dismally
every time the wind came blowing down 216th Street.

They had not lived there always. In the palmy days of work, before the
firm smashed, they had aspired to what might properly be called