to grow in sweetness beside this sordid and gilded existence in the
Apollo. The massive portals and towering masonry which at first had been
as a solid foundation for genuine respectability began to seem gloomy
and overpowering, and lacking in the true home spirit we had found
elsewhere. The smartly dressed and mannered people who rode up and down
with us on the elevator did not seem quite genuine, and their
complexions were not always real. It may have been the condition of the
Stock that disheartened us and made their lives as well as ours seem
artificial. I don't know. I only know that I began to have a dim feeling
that we would have been happier if we had been satisfied with our
oriental rugs and antique furniture, and the remnant of the Sum, without
the acquaintance of the Stock and the fallen nobleman below stairs. But,
as I have said, all things have their place and value, I suppose, and
our regrets, if they were that, have long since been dissipated, with
the things that made them possible.
Quickly, as they had come, they passed, and were not. I was working
busily one morning in my south front study when the Little Woman entered
hurriedly. It was late April and our windows were open, but being much
engaged I had not noticed the cries of "extra!" that floated up from the
street below. It was these that had brought the Little Woman, however,
and she leaned out to look and listen.
"They are calling out something about stocks and Wall Street," she said,
"I am sure of it. Go down and see, quick! Calfskin Common must have gone
to a hundred!"
"Oh, pshaw!" I laughed, "it's only the assassination of a king, or
something. You're excited and don't hear right."
Still, I did go down, and I fumed at the elevator-boy for being so slow
to answer, though I suppose he was prompt enough. The "extra" callers
had passed by the time I got to the street, but I chased and caught
them. Then I ran all the way back to the Apollo, and plunged into the
elevator that was just starting heavenward.
I suppose I looked pretty white when I rushed in where the Little Woman
was waiting. But the type that told the dreadful tale was red enough, in
all conscience. There it was, in daubed vermilion, for the whole world
and the Little Woman to see.
"PANIC ON WALL STREET.
"Break in Leather stocks causes general decline. Calfskin Common
falls twenty points in ten minutes. Three failures and more to
come!"
Following this was a brief list of the most sensational drops and the
names of the failing firms. For a moment we stared at each other,
speechless. Then the Little Woman recovered voice.
"Oh," she gasped, "we've caused a panic!"
"No," I panted, "but we're in one!"
"And we'll lose everything! People always do in panics, don't they?"
I nodded gloomily.
"A good many do. That is, unless----"
"But the stop-loss!" she remembered joyfully, "we've got a stop-loss!"
"That's so!" I assented, "the stop-loss! Our stock is already
sold--that is if the stop-loss worked."
"But you know you said it worked automatically."
"So it does--automatically, if--if it holds! It must have worked! I'll
telephone at once, and see."
There was a telephone in the Apollo and I hurried to it. Five women and
three men were waiting ahead of me, and every one tried to telephone
about stocks. Some got replies and became hysterical. One elderly woman
with a juvenile make-up and a great many rings fainted and was borne
away unconscious. A good many got nothing whatever.
I was one of the latter. The line to my brokers was busy. It was busy
all that day, during which we bought extras and suffered. By night-fall
we would have rejoiced to know that even the original fragment of the
Sum had been saved out of the general wreck of things on the Street.
It was. Even a little more, for the stop-loss that had failed to hold
against the first sudden and overwhelming pressure, had caught somewhere
about twenty, and our brokers next morning advised us of the sale.
It was a quiet breakfast that we had. We were rather mixed as to our
feelings, but I know now that a sense of relief was what we felt most.
It was all over--the tension of anxious days, and the restless nights.
Many had been ruined utterly. We had saved something out of the
wreck--enough to pay the difference in our rent. Then, too, we were
alive and well, and we had our Precious Ones. Also our furniture, which
was both satisfactory and paid for. Through the open windows the sweet
spring air was blowing in, bringing a breath and memory of country
lanes. Even before breakfast was over I reminded the Little Woman of
what she had once said about needing a home of our own, now that we had
things to put in it. I said that the memory of our one brief suburban
experience was like a dream of sunlit and perfumed fields. That we had
run the whole gamut of apartment life and the Apollo had been the
post-graduate course. In some ways it was better than the others, and if
we chose to pinch and economize in other ways, as many did, we still
might manage to pay for its luxury, but after all it was not, and never
had been a home to me, while the ground and the Precious Ones were too
far apart for health.
And the Little Woman, God bless her, agreed instantly and heartily, and
declared that we would go. Onyx and gilded elegance she said were
obtained at too great a price for people with simple tastes and moderate
incomes. As for stocks, we agreed that they were altogether in keeping
with our present surroundings--with the onyx and the gilt--with the
fallen nobleman below stairs and those who were fallen and not noble,
the artificial aristocrats, who rode up and down with us on the
elevator. We had had quite enough of it all. We had taken our apartment
for a year, but as the place was already full, with tenants waiting,
there would be no trouble to sublet to some one of the many who are ever
willing to spend most of their income in rent and live the best way they
can. Peace be with them. They are welcome to do so, but for people like
ourselves the Apollo was not built, and _Vanitas Vanitatum_ is written
upon its walls.
XIII.
_A Home at Last._
We began reading advertisements at once and took jaunts to "see
property." The various investment companies supplied free transportation
on these occasions. It was a pleasant variation from the old days of
flat hunting. The Precious Ones, who remembered with joy our former
brief suburban experiment, appreciated it, and raced shouting through
rows of new "instalment houses" with nice lawns, all within the
commutation limits. We settled on one, at last, through an agency which
the trolley-man referred to as the "Reality Trust."
The cash-payment was small and the instalments, if long continued, were
at least not discouraging as to size. We had a nice wide lawn with green
grass, a big, dry cellar with a furnace, a high, light garret, and eight
beautiful light rooms, all our own. At the back there were clothes-poles
and room for a garden. In front there was a long porch with a place for
a hammock. There was room in the yard for the Precious Ones to romp, as
well as space to spread out our rugs. We closed the bargain at once, and
engaged a moving man. Our Flat days were over.
And now fortune seemed all at once to smile. The day of our last move
was perfect. The moving man came exactly on time and delivered our
possessions at the new home on the moment of our arrival there. The
Little Woman superintended matters inside, while I spread out my rugs on
the grass in the sun and shook them and swept them and scolded the
Precious Ones, who were inclined to sit on the one I was handling, to my
heart's content. Within an hour the butcher, the baker, and the merry
milk-maker had called and established relations. By night-fall we were
fairly settled--our furniture, so crowded in a little city apartment,
airily scattered through our eight big, beautiful rooms, and our rugs,
all fresh and clean, reaching as far as they would go, suggesting new
additions to our collection whenever the spell of the dark-faced
Armenians in their dim oriental Broadway recess should assert itself
during the years to come.
[Illustration: OUR GARDEN FLOURISHED.]
Sweet spring days followed. We fairly reveled in seed catalogues, and
our garden flourished. Our neighbors, instead of borrowing our loose
property, as we had been led to expect by the comic papers, literally
overwhelmed us with garden tools and good advice. We needed both,
certainly, and were duly thankful.
As for the Precious Ones, they grew fat and brown, refused to wear hats
and shoes when summer came, and it required some argument to convince
them that even a fragmentary amount of clothes was necessary. All day
now they run, and shout, and fall down and cry, and get up again and
laugh, sit in the hammock and swing their disreputable dolls, and eat
and quarrel and make up and have a beautiful time. At night they sleep
in a big airy room where screens let the breeze in and keep out the few
friendly mosquitoes that are a part of all suburban life. We are
commuters, and we are glad of it, let the comic papers say what they
will. The fellows who write those things are bitten with something worse
than mosquitoes, _i. e._, envy--I know, because I have written some of
them myself, in the old days. Perhaps it _is_ hard to get to and from
the train sometimes--perhaps the snow _may_ blow into the garret and the
lawn be hard to mow on a hot day. But the joy of the healthy Precious
Ones and of coming out of the smelly, clattering city at the end of a
hot summer day to a cool, sweet quiet, more than makes up for all the
rest; while as one falls asleep, in a restful room that lets the breeze
in from three different directions, the memories of flat-life,
flat-hunting, and janitors--of sweltering, disordered nights, of
crashing cobble and clanging trolleys, of evil-smelling halls and
stairways, of these and of every other phase of the yardless,
constricted apartment existence, blend into a sigh of relief that is
lost in dreamless, refreshing suburban sleep.
XIV.
_Closing Remarks._
To those who of necessity are still living in city apartments, and
especially to those who are contemplating flat life I would in all
seriousness say a few closing words.
It requires education to get the best out of flat life. Not such
education as is acquired at Harvard, or Vassar, or even at the
Industrial or Cooking schools, but education in the greater school of
Humanity. In fact, flat living may be said to amount almost to a
profession. The choice of an apartment is an art in itself, and, as no
apartment is without drawbacks, the most vital should be considered as
all-important, and an agreeable willingness to put up with the minor
shortcomings of equal value. Sunlight, rental, locality, accessibility,
janitor-service, size, and convenience are all important, and about in
the order named. A dark apartment means doctor's bills, and by dark I
mean any apartment into which the broad sun does not shine at least a
portion of the day. Sunlight is the great microbe-killer, and as moss
grows on the north side of a tree, so do minute poison fungi grow in the
dim apartment. As to locality, a clean street, as far as possible from
the business center is to be preferred, and away from the crash of the
elevated railway. People are killed, morally and physically, by noise.
For this reason an apartment several flights up is desirable, though
the top floor is said by physicians to be somewhat less healthy than the
one just below.
It is hard to instruct the novice in these matters. He must learn by
experience. But there is one word that contains so much of the secret of
successful apartment life that I must not omit it here. That word is
Charity. I do not mean by this the giving of money or old clothes to
those who slip in whenever the hall door is left unlocked. I mean that
_larger_ Charity which comes of a wider understanding of the natures and
conditions of men.
You cannot expect, for instance, that a man or a woman, who serves for
rent only, and wretched basement rent at that, or for a few dollars
monthly additional at most, can be a very intelligent, capable person,
of serene temper and with qualities that one would most desire in the
ideal janitor. In the ordinary New York flat house janitors are engaged
on terms that attract only people who can find no other means of
obtaining shelter and support. Those who would fulfill your idea of what
a janitor should do have been engaged for the more expensive apartments,
or they have gone into other professions. The flat-house janitor's work
is laborious, unclean, and never ending. It is not conducive to a neat
appearance or a joyous disposition. If your janitor is only fairly
prompt in the matter of garbage and ashes, and even approximately
liberal as to heat and hot water, be glad to say a kind word to him now
and then without expecting that he will be humble or even obliging. If
you hear him knocking things about and condemning childhood in a
general way, remember that _your_ children are _only_ children, like all
the rest, and that a great many children under one roof can stretch even
a strong, wise person's endurance to the snapping point.
Then there are the neighbors. Because the woman across the hall is
boiling onions and cabbage to-day, do not forget that your cabbage and
onion day will come on Wednesday, and she will probably enjoy it just as
little as you are appreciating her efforts now. And because the children
overhead run up and down and sound like a herd of buffaloes, don't
imagine that your own Precious Ones are any more fairy-footed to the
people who live just below. It's all in the day's endurance, and the
wider your understanding and the greater your charity, the more
patiently you will live and let live. It was an old saying that no two
families could live under one roof; but in flat life ten and sometimes
twenty families must live under one roof, and while you do not need to
know them all, or perhaps any of them, you will find that they do, in
some measure, become a part of your lives, and that your own part of the
whole is just about what you make it.
Also, there are the servant girls. We cannot hope that a highly
efficient, intelligent young girl will perform menial labor some sixteen
hours a day for a few dollars a week and board, with the privilege of
eating off the tubs and sleeping in a five-by-seven closet off the
kitchen, when she can obtain a clerkship in one of the department stores
where she has light, clean employment, shorter hours, and sees
something of the passing show; or when, by attending night school for a
short time, she can learn stenography and command even better salary for
still shorter hours. It requires quite as much intelligence to be a
capable house servant as to be a good clerk; and as for education, there
is no lack of that in these days, whatever the rank of life. Even when a
girl prefers household service, if she be bright and capable it is but a
question of time when she will find employment with those to whom the
question of wages is considered as secondary to that of the quality of
service obtained in return.
So you see we must not expect too much of our "girl for general
housework," unless we are prepared to pay her for her longer hours and
harder work something approximating the sum we pay to the other girl
who comes down in a sailor hat and pretty shirt waist at nine or ten to
take a few letters and typewrite them, and read a nice new novel between
times until say five o'clock, and who gets four weeks' vacation in hot
weather, and five if she asks for it prettily, with no discontinuance of
salary. All this may be different, some day, but while we are waiting,
let us not forget that there are many things in the world that it would
be well to remember, and that "_the greatest of these_" and the one that
embraces all the rest, "_is Charity!_"
* * * * *
LORDS OF THE NORTH
By A. C. LAUT
A Strong Historical Novel
* * * * *
_LORDS OF THE NORTH_ is a thrilling romance dealing with the rivalries
and intrigues of _The Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay_ and the
_North-West Companies_ for the supremacy of the fur trade in the Great
North. It is a story of life in the open; of pioneers and trappers. The
life of the fur traders in Canada is graphically depicted. The struggles
of the Selkirk settlers and the intrigues which made the life of the two
great fur trading companies so full of romantic interest, are here laid
bare. _Francis Parkman_ and other historians have written of the
discovery and colonization of this part of our great North American
continent, but no novel has appeared so full of life and vivid interest
as _Lords of the North_. Much valuable information has been obtained
from old documents and the records of the rival companies which wielded
unlimited power over a vast extent of our country. The style is
admirable, and the descriptions of an untamed continent, of vast forest
wastes, rivers, lakes and prairies, will place this book among the
foremost historical novels of the present day. The struggles of the
English for supremacy, the capturing of frontier posts and forts, and
the life of trader and trapper are pictured with a master's hand.
Besides being vastly interesting, _Lords of the North_ is a book of
historical value.
_Cloth, 8vo, $1.50_
* * * * *
_A Drone_
and
_A Dreamer_
_A LOVE STORY_
_Illustrated, Cloth, 8vo, $1.50_
By NELSON LLOYD
_Author of "The Chronic Loafer"_
* * * * *
A critic in reviewing THE CHRONIC LOAFER said:
"Pennsylvania fiction has never been listed as a standard stock but
Mr. Lloyd has only to continue to write and Pennsylvania will be
lifted, I venture to add, into the list of preferred securities."
"A Drone and a Dreamer" is a rich fulfillment of this prophecy.
Brimming over with genial humor and wholesome fun, the book is an
exquisite love story and charming idyl of life among the mountains
and valleys of the Keystone State.
DROCH in _LIFE_:
"One of the most fertile yet unploughed regions in the United
States for local fiction is Pennsylvania. It is old, and vast and
picturesque. Bayard Taylor and Weir Mitchell have given the
Philadelphia end of the State some importance in fiction. John
Luther Long has written several effective tales in the Dutch
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two. These writers, however, have hardly scratched around the
corners of the great state. Mr. Lloyd does not try to palm off a
weak imitation of a Miss Wilkins Yankee as a rustic Pennsylvanian.
His humor comes spontaneously from the soil."
_BOOK BUYER_:
"Mr. Lloyd is an excellent workman. He makes us see the quiet of
the hills and the allurements of the trout-stream, yet he refrains
as scrupulously as Mr. Howells himself from obtruding his own
personality. His characters themselves apparently produce the
effects due to his skill. His subject-matter is remarkably fresh.
Pervading it all is a delightful humor."
* * * * *
_PARLOUS TIMES_
DAVID DWIGHT WELLS
A Novel of Modern Diplomacy
BY THE AUTHOR OF
_"Her Ladyship's Elephant."_
* * * * *
Parlous Times is a society novel of to-day. The scene is laid in London
in diplomatic circles. The romance was suggested by experiences of the
author while Second Secretary of the United States Embassy at the Court
of St. James. It is a charming love story, with a theme both fresh and
attractive. The plot is strong, and the action of the book goes with a
rush. Political conspiracy and the secrets of an old tower of a castle
in Sussex play an important part in the novel. The story is a bright
comedy, full of humor, flashes of keen wit and clever epigram. It will
hold the reader's attention from beginning to end. Altogether it is a
good story exceedingly well told, and promises to be Mr. Wells' most
successful novel.
_Cloth, 8vo, $1.50_
* * * * *
NORTH
WEST _But One Verdict_ EAST
SOUTH
_THE CHRONIC LOAFER_
_BY NELSON LLOYD_
8vo, Cloth, $1.25
* * * * *
Outlook, New York
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Chicago Inter-Ocean
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Omaha World Herald
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Portland Transcript
"A cheerful companion. The reviewer has enjoyed it in a month when
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Denver Republican
"Nelson Lloyd is to be hailed as a Columbus. There isn't a story in
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* * * * *
CHARLES KINGSLEY
NOVELS, POEMS AND LIFE
* * * * *
CHESTER EDITION
* * * * *
Illustrated with 42 photogravure plates printed on Japanese paper, from
paintings by _Zeigler_, and from portraits by _Reich_ and others,
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large type, on choice laid paper.
* * * * *
_14 volumes, 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $20.00._
_One Half crushed morocco, gilt top, $41.00._
* * * * *
Supplied separately in cloth, as follows:
HEREWARD THE WAKE 2 Vols. $3.00
ALTON LOCKE 2 " 3.00
WESTWARD HO! 2 " 3.00
YEAST 1 " 1.50
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HYPATIA 2 " 3.00
POEMS 1 " 1.50
LETTERS AND MEMORIES 2 " 3.00
_This is the only illustrated edition of this author's works ever
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* * * * *
_Little Leather_
_Breeches_
_AND OTHER SOUTHERN RHYMES_
COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY
FRANCIS P. WIGHTMAN
_Forty-eight full-page colored illustrations and cover by the author_
Quarto, $1.50
* * * * *
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* * * * *
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