advertisement pamphlets, fans, picture cards, and toy whips, while the
air itself was full of the smell of fresh popcorn.

They even spent some time in the art gallery. Trina's cousin Selina,
who gave lessons in hand painting at two bits an hour, generally had an
exhibit on the walls, which they were interested to find. It usually was
a bunch of yellow poppies painted on black velvet and framed in gilt.
They stood before it some little time, hazarding their opinions, and
then moved on slowly from one picture to another. Trina had McTeague buy
a catalogue and made a duty of finding the title of every picture. This,
too, she told McTeague, as a kind of education one ought to cultivate.
Trina professed to be fond of art, having perhaps acquired a taste for
painting and sculpture from her experience with the Noah's ark animals.

"Of course," she told the dentist, "I'm no critic, I only know what
I like." She knew that she liked the "Ideal Heads," lovely girls with
flowing straw-colored hair and immense, upturned eyes. These always had
for title, "Reverie," or "An Idyll," or "Dreams of Love."

"I think those are lovely, don't you, Mac?" she said.

"Yes, yes," answered McTeague, nodding his head, bewildered, trying to
understand. "Yes, yes, lovely, that's the word. Are you dead sure now,
Trina, that all that's hand-painted just like the poppies?"

Thus the winter passed, a year went by, then two. The little life
of Polk Street, the life of small traders, drug clerks, grocers,
stationers, plumbers, dentists, doctors, spirit-mediums, and the like,
ran on monotonously in its accustomed grooves. The first three years
of their married life wrought little change in the fortunes of the
McTeagues. In the third summer the branch post-office was moved from the
ground floor of the flat to a corner farther up the street in order
to be near the cable line that ran mail cars. Its place was taken by
a German saloon, called a "Wein Stube," in the face of the protests
of every female lodger. A few months later quite a little flurry of
excitement ran through the street on the occasion of "The Polk Street
Open Air Festival," organized to celebrate the introduction there of
electric lights. The festival lasted three days and was quite an affair.
The street was garlanded with yellow and white bunting; there were
processions and "floats" and brass bands. Marcus Schouler was in his
element during the whole time of the celebration. He was one of