John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He worked at $20 per week
in a nine-story, red-brick building at either Insurance, Buckle's
Hoisting Engines, Chiropody, Loans, Pulleys, Boas Renovated, Waltz
Guaranteed in Five Lessons, or Artificial Limbs. It is not for us to
wring Mr. Hopkins's avocation from these outward signs that be.

Mrs. Hopkins was like a thousand others. The auriferous tooth, the
sedentary disposition, the Sunday afternoon wanderlust, the draught
upon the delicatessen store for home-made comforts, the furor for
department store marked-down sales, the feeling of superiority to
the lady in the third-floor front who wore genuine ostrich tips and
had two names over her bell, the mucilaginous hours during which
she remained glued to the window sill, the vigilant avoidance of
the instalment man, the tireless patronage of the acoustics of the
dumb-waiter shaft--all the attributes of the Gotham flat-dweller were
hers.

One moment yet of sententiousness and the story moves.

In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner
and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your old friend
from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in
the park--and lo! bandits attack you--you are ambulanced to the
hospital--you marry your nurse; are divorced--get squeezed while
short on U. P. S. and D. O. W. N. S.--stand in the bread line--marry
an heiress, take out your laundry and pay your club dues--seemingly
all in the wink of an eye. You travel the streets, and a finger
beckons to you, a handkerchief is dropped for you, a brick is dropped
upon you, the elevator cable or your bank breaks, a table d'hôte or