Excalibur--none but the appointed hand could draw it forth. The witch,
after a struggle, passed this test, and produced a parchment covered
with large childish printing in red ink.

"My employer made up this," said the witch. "And the ferryman wrote it
out for us."

This is the prospectus:

The name of this house is Living Alone.

It is meant to provide for the needs of those who dislike hotels,
clubs, settlements, hostels, boarding-houses, and lodgings only
less than their own homes; who detest landladies, waiters,
husbands and wives, charwomen, and all forms of lookers after. This
house is a monastery and a convent for monks and nuns dedicated to
unknown gods. Men and women who are tired of being laboriously kind
to their bodies, who like to be a little uncomfortable and quite
uncared for, who love to live from week to week without speaking,
except to confide their destinations to 'bus-conductors, who are
weary of woolly decorations, aspidistras, and the eternal two
generations of roses which riot among blue ribbons on hireling
wall-papers, who are ignorant of the science of tipping and
thanking, who do not know how to cook yet hate to be cooked for,
will here find the thing they have desired, and something else as
well.

There are six cells in this house, and no common sitting-room.
Guests wishing to address each other must do so on the stairs, or
in the shop. Each cell has whitewashed walls, and contains a small