use, and wuz kept clean, and so high up
that they could get a breath of air now and then.

But the way up to 'em led over a crazy pair of stairs, so broken and
rotten that even the Agent wuz disgusted with 'em and had wrote a letter
to Elnathan asking for new stairs, and new sanitary arrangements, as the
deaths wuz so frequent in that particular tenement, that the Agent wuz
frightened, for fear they would be complained of by the City
Fathers--though them old fathers can stand a good deal without
complainin'.

Wall, the Agent wrote, but Elnathan wuz at that time buildin' a new
orchid house (he had more'n a dozen of 'em before) for The Little Maid;
she loved these half-human blossoms.

And he wuz buildin' a high palm house, and a new fountain, and a veranda
covered with carved lattice-work around The Little Maid's apartments.
And a stained-glass gallery, leading from the conservatory to the
greenhouses, and these other houses I have mentioned, so that The Little
Maid could walk out to 'em on too sunny days, or when it misted some.

And so he wrote back to his Agent, that "he couldn't possibly spend any
money on stairs or plumbin' in a tenement house, for the repairs he wuz
making on his own place at Menlo Park would cost more than a hundred
thousand dollars--and he felt that he couldn't fix them stairs, and he
thought anyway it wuzn't best to listen to the complaints of complaining
tenants." And he ended in that jokelar way of hisen--

"That if you listened to 'em, and done one thing for 'em, the next thing
they would want would be velvet-lined carriages to ride out in."

And the Agent, havin' jest seen the tenth funeral a-wendin' out of that
very house that week, and bein' a man of some sense, though hampered,
wrote back and said--"Carriages wouldn't be the next thing that they
would all want, but coffins."

He said sence he had wrote to Elnathan more than a dozen had been wanted
there in that very house, and the tenants had been borne out in 'em.

(And laid in fur cleaner dirt than they wuz accustomed to there;) he
didn't write this last--that is my own eppisodin'.

And agin the Agent mentioned the stairs, and agin he mentioned the
plumbin'.

But Elnathan wuz so interested then and took up in tryin' to decide
whether he would have a stained-glass angel or some stained-glass
cherubs a-hoverin' over the gallery in front of The Little Maid's room,
that he hadn't a mite of time to argue any further on the subject