d a row of gay plants along the gutter. Here every
afternoon exactly at six--the roof being then in shadow--a man appears
and reads his evening paper. Later his wife joins him and they eat
their supper from a tray. They are sunk almost in a well of buildings
which, like the hedge of a fairy garden, shuts them from all contact
with the world. And here they sit when the tray has been removed. The
twilight falls early at their level and, like cottagers in a valley,
they watch the daylight that still gilds the peaks above them.

There is another of these out-of-door rooms above me on a higher
building. From my lower level I can see the bright canvas and the
side of the trellis that supports it. Here, doubtless, in the cool
breeze of these summer evenings, honest folk sip their coffee and
watch the lights start across the city.

Thus, all around, I have glimpses of my neighbors--a form against the
curtains--a group, in the season, around the fire--the week's darning
in a rocker--an early nose sniffing at the open window the morning
airs.

But it is these roofs themselves that are the general prospect.

Close at hand are graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents and
chimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle from
which once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming is
timed to the very hour--almost to the minute--yet when the scuttle
stirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the forty
thieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But the
laundress is of so unromantic and jouncing a figure that I abandon the
fancy when no more than her shoulders are above the scuttle. She is,
however, an amiable creature and, if the wind is right, I hear her
singing at her task. When clothespins fill her mouth, she experiments
with popular tunes. One of these wooden bipeds once slipped inside and
nearly strangled her.

In the distance, on the taller buildings, water tanks are lifted
against the sky. They are perched aloft on three fingers, as it were,
as if the buildings were just won to prohibition and held up their
water cups in the first excitement of a novice to pledge the cause.
Let hard liquor crouch and tremble in its rathskeller below the
sidewalk! In the basement let musty kegs roll and gurgle with hopeless
fear! _Der Tag!_ The roof, the triumphant roof, has gone dry.

This range of buildings with water tanks and towers stops my gaze to
the North. There is a c