] in company with
Bird, the painter. Then he had breakfast, ordered his carriage, and
drove to Huckleberry Street. On the way down he debated what he should
do. He couldn't follow in Vail's footsteps. He was not a missionary. He
went first and found Perdue, who had been fighting off a threatened
attack of tremens all night, relieved the necessities of his family,
and took the golden-haired fellow into his carriage. He ordered the
coachman to drive the whole length of Huckleberry Street slowly.

[4] The New-Year's call is one of several things alluded to in
the text that were in vogue when the story was written, but seem
anachronisms in 1893.

"Perdue, what can I do down here? Vail always said that I could do
something, if I would try."

"Why, Charley, start a club. That's what these fellows need. How I
should like to hear you talk again!"

IV.

How provoking this is! I thought I should get through with three parts.
But Christmas is a time when a man can not avoid a tendency to long
stories. One can not quite control one's self in a time of mirth, and
here my history has grown until I shall have to put on a mansard roof
to accommodate it. For in all these three parts I have told you about
everything but what my title promised. If you have ever gone through
Huckleberry Street--of course you never have gone through such a street
except by accident, since you are neither poor, vicious, nor
benevolent, and only the poor, the vicious, and the benevolent ever go
there intentionally--but if you have ever happened to go there of late
years, you have seen the Christmas Club building. For on that very
morning, with poor "Baron Bertram" in the carriage, Charley resolved to
found a club in Huckleberry Street. And what house so good as the one
in which Henry Vail had lived?

So he drove up to the house on the corner of Greenfield Court and began
to examine it. It was an old-fashioned house; and in its time, when the
old families inhabited the downtown streets, it had been an
aristocratic mansion. The lower floor was occupied by a butcher's shop,
and in the front room, where an old family had once entertained its
guests, cheap roasts were being dispensed to the keepers of low
boarding houses. The antique fireplace and the ancient mantelpiece were
forced to keep company with meat blocks and butchers' cleavers. Above
this were Henry Vail's rooms, where the old chambers had been carefully
restored; and above t