ny rate it was just as much fun
to watch the things grow, and though the lettuce never amounted to
much we actually raised some very good radishes. The flowers did well,
too.

We brought up an old blanket and spread it out beneath the canopy and
that, with a chair or two, made our roof garden. A local branch of the
Public Library was not far distant so that we had all the reading
matter we wanted and here we used to sit all day Sunday when we didn't
feel like doing anything else. Here, too, we used to sit evenings. On
several hot nights Ruth, the boy and I brought up our blankets and
slept out. The boy liked it so well that finally he came to sleep up
here most of the summer. It was fine for him. The harbor breeze swept
the air clean of smoke so that it was as good for him as being at the
sea-shore.

To us the sights from this roof were marvelous. They appealed strongly
because they were unlike anything we had ever seen or for that matter
unlike anything our friends had ever seen. I think that a man's
friends often take away the freshness from sights that otherwise might
move him. I've never been to Europe but what with magazine pictures
and snap shots and Mrs. Grover, who never forgot that before she
married Grover she had travelled for a whole year, I haven't any
special desire to visit London or Paris. I suppose it would be
different if I ever went but even then I don't think there would be
the novelty to it we found from our roof. And it was just that novelty
and the ability to appreciate it that made our whole emigrant life
possible. It was for us the Great Adventure again. I suppose there are
men who will growl that it's all bosh to say there is any real romance
in living in four rooms in a tenement district, eating what we ate,
digging in a ditch and mooning over a view from a roof top. I want to
say right here that for such men there wouldn't be any romance or
beauty in such a life. They'd be miserable. There are plenty of men
living down there now and they never miss a chance to air their
opinions. Some of them have big bodies but I wouldn't give them fifty
cents a day to work for me. Luckily however, there are not many of
them in proportion to the others, even though they make more noise.

But when you stop to think about it what else is it but romance that
leads men to spend their lives fishing off the Banks when they could
remain safely ashore and get better pay driving a team? Or what drives
them into t