was obtained from
kerosene lamps at the expense of the tenant, and water had to be carried
from the court below, while all refuse matter not emptied into the court
itself, had to be taken to the foul vaults beneath it. The rooms, having
all these drawbacks, and being destitute of the commonest appliances for
comfort or decency, did not appear to be in the highest degree eligible;
yet the Pensioner considered himself fortunate in having secured them.
His experience in living must have been very doleful, for he declared
that he had seen worse places. In itself, and so far as the landlord was
concerned, I doubted him; but I had myself seen fouler places than these
two rooms, which had been made so by the tenants. All that cleanliness
could do to make the kennel of the Pensioner habitable had been done, and
I looked with more respect upon the uncouth woman who had scoured the
rough floor white, than I ever had upon a gaudily attired dame sweeping
Broadway with her silken trail. The thrift that had so little for its
nourishment had not been expended wholly upon the floor, for I noticed
that the two children asleep on the shakedown were clean, while the
little fellow four years of age, who was apparently prepared for bed as
he was entirely naked, but sat as yet upon one of the three chairs, had
no speck of dirt upon his fair white skin. A painter should have seen
him as he gazed wonderingly upon us, and my respect deepened for the
woman who could, spite the hard lines of her rugged life, bring forth and
preserve so much of childish symmetry and beauty.

"Having absorbed these general facts, I turned to the master of this
household. He was a man of small stature but rugged frame, and his left
shirt sleeve dangled empty at his side. That adroit Finn, noticing my
inquiring look, blurted out: 'That arm went in a street accident, I
suppose?'

"'No, sir; it wint at the battle of Spottsylvania.'

"Here was a hero! The narrow limits of his humble home expanded to
embrace the brown and kneaded Virginian glades as I saw them just seven
years ago, pictured with the lurid pageantry of that stubborn fight when
Sedgwick fell. This man, crammed with his family into twelve feet square
at the top of Sweeney's Shambles, was once part of that glorious scene.
In answer to my test questions he said he belonged to the Thirty-ninth
New York, which was attached to the Second Corps, and that he received a
pension of $15 per month from the