Eeldrop and Appleplex

T.S. Eliot




I




Eeldrop and Appleplex rented two small rooms in a disreputable part of
town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes
slept, and after they had slept, they cooked oatmeal and departed in
the morning for destinations unknown to each other. They sometimes
slept, more often they talked, or looked out of the window.

They had chosen the rooms and the neighborhood with great care. There
are evil neighborhoods of noise and evil neighborhoods of silence, and
Eeldrop and Appleplex preferred the latter, as being the more evil. It
was a shady street, its windows were heavily curtained; and over it
hung the cloud of a respectability which has something to conceal. Yet
it had the advantage of more riotous neighborhoods near by, and Eeldrop
and Appleplex commanded from their windows the entrance of a police
station across the way. This alone possessed an irresistible appeal in
their eyes. From time to time the silence of the street was broken;
whenever a malefactor was apprehended, a wave of excitement curled into
the street and broke upon the doors of the police station. Then the
inhabitants of the street would linger in dressing-gowns, upon their