of a "shilling" doctor in a similar quarter of London. Here
were seven rooms, at a rent of forty-five dollars a month, and no end of
conveniences--certainly many more than in any flat that I had ever
occupied myself! I visited another house and saw similar interiors. And
now I began to be struck by the splendor and the cleanliness of the
halls, landings, and staircases: marble halls, tesselated landings, and
stairs out of Holland; the whole producing a gorgeous effect--to match
the glory of the embroidered pillow-cases in the bedrooms. On the roofs
were drying-grounds, upon which each tenant had her rightful "day," so
that altercations might not arise. I saw an empty flat. The professional
vermin exterminator had just gone--for the landlord-company took no
chances in this detail of management.

Then I was lifted a little higher in the social-financial scale, to a
building of which the entrance-hall reminded me of the foyers of grand
hotels. A superb negro held dominion therein, but not over the telephone
girl, who ran the exchange ten hours a day for twenty-five dollars a
month, which, considering that the janitor received sixty-five dollars
and his rooms, seemed to me to be somewhat insufficient. In this house
the corridors were broader, and to the conveniences was added a
mail-shoot, a device which is still regarded in Europe as the final word
of plutocratic luxury rampant. The rents ran to forty-eight dollars a
month for six rooms. In this house I was asked by hospitable tenants
whether I was not myself, and, when I had admitted that I was myself,
books of which I had been guilty were produced, and I was called upon to
sign them.

The fittings and decorations of all these flats were artistically
vulgar, just as they are in flats costing a thousand dollars a month,
but they were well executed, and resulted in a general harmonious effect
of innocent prosperity. The people whom I met showed no trace of the
influence of those older artistic civilizations whose charm seems subtly
to pervade the internationalism of the East Side. In certain strata and
streaks of society on the East Side things artistic and intellectual are
comprehended with an intensity of emotion and understanding impossible
to Anglo-Saxons. This I know.

The Bronx is different. The Bronx is beginning again, at a stage earlier
than art, and beginning better. It is a place for those who have learnt
that physical righteousness has got to be the basis of