proportions might reasonably commend themselves to the
necessities, if not to the taste of the city's mayor.

A little shop, one story in height and old enough for its simple
wooden walls to cry aloud for paint, stood out from the middle of
a row of cheap brick houses. Directly opposite it were two
conspicuous dwellings, neither of them new and one of them
ancient as the street itself. They stood fairly close together,
with an alley running between. From the number I had now reached
it was evident that the mayor lived in one of these. Happily it
was in the fresher and more inviting one. As I noted this, I
paused in admiration of its spacious front and imposing doorway.
The latter was in the best style of Colonial architecture, and
though raised but one step from the walk, was so distinguished by
the fan-tailed light overhead and the flanking casements glazed
with antique glass, that I felt myself carried back to the days
when such domiciles were few and denoted wealth the most solid,
and hospitality the most generous.

A light wall, painted to match the house, extended without break
to the adjoining building, a structure equal to the other in age
and dimensions, but differing in all other respects as much as
neglect and misuse could make it. Gray and forbidding, it
towered in its place, a perfect foil to the attractive dwelling
whose single step I now amounted with cheerful composure.

What should I have thought if at that moment I had been told that
appearances were deceitful, and that there were many persons then
living who, if left to their choice, would prefer life in the
dismal walls from which I had instinctively turned, to a single