girls would gaze at it, lift their petticoats, and take a few graceful
steps. Olsen's Elvira had learned her first dance-steps here, and now
she was dancing respectable citizens into the poor-house. And the
furniture broker's daughter was in Petersburg, and was _almost_ a
Grand Duchess!

On the walls of the narrow shaft projecting porches hung crazily, so
that they left only a small free space, and here the clothes-lines ran
to and fro, loaded with dishclouts and children's clothing. The decaying
wooden staircases ran zig-zag up the walls, disappearing into the
projecting porches and coming out again, until they reached the very
garrets.

From the projecting porches and the galleries, doors led into the
various tenements, or to long corridors that connected the inner
portions of the house. Only in Pipman's side there were neither porches
nor galleries, from the second story upward; time had devoured them, so
that the stairs alone remained in place. The ends of the joists stuck
out of the wall like decaying tooth stumps, and a rope hung from above,
on which one could obtain a hold. It was black and smooth from the grip
of many hands.

On one of those hot June days when the heavens shone like a blazing fire
above the rift overhead, the heavy, mouldering timbers came to life
again, as if their forest days had returned. People swarmed in and out
on the stairs, shadows came and went, and an incessant chattering filled
the twilight. From porch to porch dropped the sour-smelling suds from
the children's washing, until at last it reached the ground, where the
children were playing by the sluggish rivulets which ran from the
gutters. The timbers groaned continually, like ancient boughs that rub